It's always sunny in Chapel Hill

Alright, that's a lie.

But it's a gorgeous sunny Thursday today, at least. Seventies, Carolina Blue skies, lovely.

Today's Tin Can Brigade adventure went well. I flew out and back with this pediatric cardiologist and his echo tech, whom I've flown with before. My doc at the ACT team had decided to take a few days off, so I went out with one of the nurses and had a couple of my very own patients to see at the rest home we went to. I made some minor med changes. I did some quick home visits. It was nice, actually, and we still got done by two so I could hitch a ride back with the Cards guys.

We went to this Mongolian Barbecue place for lunch which was just so-so, but, it was lunch. They had these really interesting things she kept referring to a "Greek rolls", which were sort of like soft sesame crackers. Now, there was absolutely NOTHING Greek about this place, and I'm sure they were probably Korean, but they were the best part of the whole meal and my people are happy to take credit for them.

So I came home and took a nap, because I was sleepy and cranky and I have this bad habit of becoming unconscious every time I get in a plane (seriously. I don't think we'd hit cruising altitude - which, remember, is about a mile - before I was out. And probably snoring, which is one of the problems with this little habit of mine. Although at least on the Anchovy Tin everyone has earplugs in). I was going to go to the screening of the documentary that was done a year or so ago about our gallery of artists with mental illness, but my child therapy supervisor wanted to "meet" by phone at 7 (we talked for 20 minutes and then her phone died. Oh well. More to come). So I decided to start my laundry instead. And, having just decided that whatever I was wearing needed to be washed and dropped it into the washer, no sooner did that happen than someone knocked at the door.

Um. Oh.

I skittered to my bedroom and grabbed my bathrobe, which is of course very thick flannel with snowflakes all over it. In which it makes perfect sense to be answering the door at 4pm on a Thursday in 80 degree weather.

It turned out to be two of my neighbors, who moved in a month or two ago. I met their landlord shortly before, who went on and on about how they were "good Christian kids, boys on one side of the house, girls on the other" (I cringe every time the very first way in which someone describes themselves is as a "good Christian"). Thusfar, I'll concede, they have seemed pretty tame. You know, like the rest of us on this block. They were very pleasant, in a distant, "hey that's a big dog and you're wearing a bathrobe" kind of way. Aryan, plain, wholesome, skinny girls, probably Midwestern. As opposed to, say, the loud, outspoken, brash, swears like a drunken sailor, Zaftig suicide redhead kind of Midwesterner.

But, whatever, they brought cake.

It was dry and needed cinnamon. And maybe a touch more vanilla. But it was pretty. And, chocolate cake.

In other news, I finished the first of my quick-and-dirty plain old socks yesterday.



They're the first in a series, I think, of what I'm calling "leftover socks." Simple, short (I like the anklet-y type better anyway), reasonably quick and easy that I can bang out in a few weeks of lectures and use up some of my leftovers in my stash. These are from a skein of Dream in Color yarn in a color called Spring Tickle that ended up being a second because the blue dye didn't quite dissolve well enough and so, if you were able to look closely, you'd see that the yarn was actually a bit speckled. So we couldn't sell it to real people. So I destocked it and made a hat. For a pumpkin.


Note the little center stem-hole. I liked that hat. I don't think I took it with me when I left, but I should have. In case I ever have a pumpkin down here that has a cold head.

Well, tomorrow is going to be a long day (and night). The interns are off on their retreat tomorrow, so we're all covering their call. Tomorrow night I'm playing intern again with Sparrow as my second year, so we're sure to have two things: a very busy night, and a rockin' good time.

It's like magic!

So I finished my first Tolerence Sock on Thursday.


It's sort of based on Sarah's December Nights sock pattern, except, it's a beaded rib instead of using her star pattern.

But the idea is the same. It's my first, actual, completed, toe-up sock. I'm pleased. It's the Royal Hare sock yarn (which seems to have lost or moved its website...) that Tiny Tyrant sent me in our yarn swap way the heck back in January.

I did a little fiddling with the pattern...as I think I mentioned, I did some decreases over the Achillies tendon to try and fix the bagging...I'm not sure it helped, but, whatever. And my heel turn is boxy and square, but actually pretty comfortable.

I'm reasonably certain the second sock isn't going to match the first one, because I want to perfect the alterations in the pattern before I start my next pair, which is probably going to be a gift for Ruthie, who requested a pair of wool socks and has been completely fascinated the whole time I've been knitting this one. I keep offering to teach her to knit, but I think she's still in the precontemplation stage. I also have, like, thirty-seven other pair I want to knit for people, not to mention the fact that I have this idea about knitting myself a whole drawer full of socks (if nothing else, the people at the New Balance store will stop yelling at me every time I go in wearing cotton socks). But I really like the pattern.

I also, as many of you know, used to be a die-hard devotee of the DPNs for sock knitting. It's traditional, it's small and portable, it's the way my ancestors made socks, right, there has to be importance in that. I tried the two-circulars method, because most of my knitting buddies were fans of that, and found it waaaay too fiddly to have those extra needls flopping all over the place. And of course we all scoffed at the Magic Loop people. That was just silly.

Until one day, when I convinced my bosses at the yarn shop to order the Magic Loop book as a means of using up some of the store credit I had. I said, make sure you order an extra for me, because I want to try this. They, of course, didn't (let's face it - my bosses are better at the yarn wholesaler business than they were as yarn retailers). But I got one anyway, and tried it. And got frustrated. And then decided to take a different approach. So I sat down and read it, and then went to my yarn and tried to base what I was doing on the idea rather than the step-by-step.

I've been a convert ever since.

So Magic Loop isn't nearly as strange or magical as it may seem. You'll need a long circular needle - 36" seems to work well for socks; 24" is doable but tight and 40" is a little too much cord but it also works (the Tolerence Socks are being knitted on a 40").


Here's what you do:

1. Cast on your stitches.


2. Pull both needles away from the cast-on stitches, so that they are now sitting in the middle of the cord.


3. Divide them in half (or, roughly so. If you're doing a multiple-of-four pattern or something, you can have two more on one side than on the other, but, you get the idea). Fold the cord at that halfway point.

4. Push on the needle end (either one) and feed the cord through so it makes a loop between the stitches that are folded at the halfway point.


5. Set your work up in front of you so that the yarn tail is on the back row of stitches.


6. Pull on the approriate side that loop of cord until the stitches in front are back on the front needle. Your back needle should be free of the back row of stitches with significant mobility so that you can bend it around and use that needle on the front row.


7. Knit into the first stitch of the front row. Work to the end of the row.


8. Flip your work over and repeat.


Eventually this will become a tube. I've made hats, bags, mittens...you can make anything circular with this method. It takes a little pratice and fuss to figure out how to position the needle around the working yarn so that you don't get it all tangled up in the cable, but you get this pretty quickly. And anything you can do on straight needles, or DPNs, or two circs, you can do with this - increases, decreases, cables, bobbles...okay, please don't do bobbles. The world has enough bobbles already.

For those of you who are more visual or auditory learners, here's a nice video off YouTube.



And you can use any sock pattern, but for the more advanced, here's the next one I want to try. It's the Magic Loop sock pattern from Knitpicks. Free download! Hooray!

Thoughts? Questions? Tips from the gallery? And hey, Allison - did that help??

Nearer my god to thee

Today was weird.

So I get out to the airfield this morning, and they're all waiting for me, and we pile into this tiny little anchovy can with wings. They let me sit up front. They encouraged me to sit up front. It was me, and two other doctors, and an ultrasound tech. And, obviously, the pilot. So I walked across the wing (!) and climbed in. We didn't shut the door until we were just about to take off (because, you know, there's no AC on the plane). And then away we went.

I was practically in the pilot's lap.

It does not help that little planes? Not so much made for big people.

Also, you know, I've never once gotten carsick, airsick, or seasick in my entire life. But I'll be honest, I was a little queasy for about the first 15 minutes or so. It was definitely bumpier than a commercial flight. On the way home, we flew through some rain (at about 5000 feet, which meant we were flying through a whole bunch of clouds) and there was a lot of this sort of slipping going on that felt like being in a car that was sliding on ice. I'm knitting away, being a little nervous about this (not to mention all of the bumping around we were doing)....and the pilot was reading a book.

I was just glad it wasn't Flying for Dummies.

AHEC was an interesting time, too. The staff psychiatrist and I tooled around digging up crazy people. No, really. It was actually kind of cool. He and I got in the car, and drove around doing home visits. Or, well, the closest we could get. One guy, who's homeless, apparently they usually meet him at the library. Today the shelter let them all stay in, because it was so hot out (SO hot), so we pulled up to the shelter, and he climbs into the back of the car, we check in with him, and then he gets out and we drive away. The first guy we saw, he answers the door, he's this young guy, cornrows, t-shirt, baggy jeans. We walk into the house...and it's full of these, like, 12" dolls with big, crocheted dresses.

We walked out, and I said to Dr. B... "Um...so I'm guessing that's his mom's house."

It was also immaculate. Smelled like apple-cinnamon oatmeal. There were adorable small people there (his nieces, for whom he babysits). I was ready to pull up a spot on the big overstuffed couch and watch Hannah Montana with them.

He also gave us a CD he made of two of the songs he wrote. He and Dr. B trade hip-hop CDs occasionally, apparently. But the patient is more East Coast, he tells me, and Doc is more West Coast (I actually disagree with him...he had a distinct Biggie Smalls thing going on the tracks he laid down). I said, well, that works out, because, frankly, I'm more Dirty South.

We also saw this older guy, whose family is totally taking advantage of him and so completely not taking care of him. Every morning he gets just enough money to walk down to the store to get a soda and cigarettes. And then he comes home and sits on the couch and watches TV in this dark, filthy house that reeks of cigarettes and cat urine, with all the curtains drawn tight. Which wasn't quite as bad as the rest home that was our last stop, where, apparently, a lot of our "consumers" (can't call them "patients" anymore, that's not PC) live. Each building we walked into smelled worse than the last. The conditions were awful. It was astonishing.

And then I got back on the plane.

::sigh:: I did get the heel turned on my toe-up Tolerance Sock. So named because I let my obnoxious Family Medicine upper-level knit a row and her tension was all wrong. And then because I missed a few rows of ribbing on the top of the foot. I kept convincing myself that it was NOT worth frogging the whole sock just because it had some quirks. Even though I'm wishing I had about 4 fewer stitches in it. Maybe 8. But then, today, I finished the heel and realized that something had gone horribly, terribly wrong.



I ripped out the heel flap, but you know....I think I'm just going to frog the whole thing and just start over. I love the yarn, and I love working it on the Addi Lace needles...screw tolerance, I want nice socks!

Ever'ting's gonna be alright, now...

(Love me some Bob Marley. There's a story about why I love Bob Marley, and this pothead boy that I adored in med school - yes, he's a doctor, now, too. He was a wicked smart pothead boy - but I'll save that for another day. Suffice it to say that we had this plan about running away to a Caribbean island and setting up a little free clinic and never having to wear shoes.)

Hmm. It's been an interesting morning. Haven't really gotten much done (well, that's just not true...I haven't gotten any more packing done), but I came home and I sat down, and I decided to do a little blog reading to quiet my latest swell of ohmigodohmigodihmigod that was inspired by what I just left (get there in a minute). And I read Barb's post about her charmed life and I thought, you know...maybe I'll take a moment more, here.

There was this patient we had on the adolescent unit when I was there, we'll call her Autumn. She wasn't my patient, and when you got right down to the nitty gritty, she was there for some pretty unfortunate reasons and some unsettling behaviors. She, too, was a pretty big pothead, about to turn 18, really was sort of doing the best she could with one heck of a messed-up life. But I'll be damned if, while on our unit, she wasn't the most positive force to be reckoned with. She was roommates with one of my patients, a girl who, when I met her, I'll admit it, I was like, oh, God, kid, suck it up and quit being a baby. I got over it, but Autumn, right away, she was all over this kid, calmed her down, comforted her, and made posters for my patient's side of the room saying "It's going to be okay."

This, it turned out, was such an Autumn catch phrase. She wrote it on the windows (they're allowed to do that, there), she frequently referenced it at morning meeting (usually in the form of, "See? I told you it was going to be okay"), I think it was something of a mantra for her.

It's a good mantra. I should really co-opt that.

So this morning, I got up, and went to the hospital to pick up the boxes that everyone's been stashing in the intern office for me. PenguinShrink, who was coming off call, the poor thing, was very sweet and helped me carry them all out. We ran into the clinic manager, who's going to call me later this afternoon so that she can unload her large pile of empty boxes on me (yay!). And then I did some dumpster diving on the way out and found some more - a skill I perfected at the yarn shop, back in the day. Back when the little hand dyed yarn company was just a teetering startup, we'd dumpster dive for shipping boxes two or three times a week. Occasionally one of us would toss little Veronica into the dumpster outside the Sears, and she'd pick out the really good ones. The service guys thought we were crazy, and the Man in Brown was always amused at us shipping boxes and boxes of yarn outwardly disguised as vacuum cleaners and motor parts.

Anyhow.

I then went over to pick up the keys to the new place. Originally, remember, I was renting the house that Sparrow is currently living in, and she was moving in to part of the landlord's house, but then the plan changed and now I'm moving in to the identical cottage next door.

Except, whoa, not so identical.

The kid that lives there, let's call him Kyle (because of the Jew 'Fro. Ever see the South Park eps where Kyle has to take off his hat?), has not taken nearly as good care of the place as Sparrow has of hers. It's a dump, currently. And I have absolutely no doubts that by Friday, when I'm slated to move in there, it will be spic and span and repainted and the refrigerator will be replaced and all the cabinets will have their faces on again and it will be clean and not disgusting and all the crap that he has in there despite the fact that he was supposed to be out two days ago and has been off work for the past three weeks and oh my holy frakkin' wow is that place still full of crap (breathe, breathe) will be gone and it will be lovely. Totally, wonderfully lovely, because my landlord will accept nothing less. Both my current landlord, or the neighbor who bought her place and is about to become my landlord. Won't stand for it being anything short of lovely and wonderful and every bit the seaside-cottage-evoking bliss retreat that I was assuming I would get when I moved into Sparrow's place.

But right now? Oh, holy shit.

I also keep forgetting how very small the place really is. Extremely rough estimate? Maybe 700 square feet. My current place? 1300. My old house in NH? 2000.

You see why this is squeaking me out a little.

But I'm trying (trying) to get rid of as much crap as I can. I mean, I'm putting the buffet in storage and the guest bed, and donating most of the bookcases and my dressers and the coffee table and possibly the couch (I know, Mom and Dad, I know!). I'm donating a lot of general stuff. But still. There's just so much stuff. I have no doubt I can live in such a small space, but, I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with all the crap that I kind of actually have a use for. Like my sewing stuff. And all the damn yarn.

I mean, I do have an attic, and also, I discovered today, a nice shed. But still. The whole thing is sort of overwhelming....

But it's going to be okay.

And I should just go get going....

And this is why I rarely mess around with gauge swatches...

So you'll remember how a couple of weeks ago I learned that my friends' mom was diagnosed with metastatic amelanotic melanoma.

(By the way, if you can say that five times fast without massively flubbing it, I think you automatically get admitted to an Oncology fellowship. If you say it in front of a mirror Biggie Smalls appears and gives you skin cancer.)

(Yes, that whole joke was in very poor taste. We doctors love our gallows humor defense mechanisms...)

(Anyway.)

So, since I can't actually cure cancer and am in fact pretty much powerless to help in any way at all (see above gallows humor), I picked up my needles. And began knitting a shawl. Because interferon doesn't make your hair fall out, and besides, she's been part of our social "family" for nearly fifteen years now, and very dear to me for at least the last twelve of those (I don't think I knew her very well until my friends actually started dating). She's a good lady. She deserves something warm and cuddly. So I had this Cherry Tree Hill marl in my stash. It was like 500 y and I thought, ah, this will work.

So I cast on 220 stitches, and worked and worked and knit and knit and knit and even put a little design in on the bottom.

And I started worrying that it was going to be a little short. Which I kind of figured, which is why I'd cast it on width-wise instead of height-wise. And so as the yarn began to run out, I started worrying that it was going to be too short and too narrow.

Well, it is a little short (I stole Barb's cork-for-size-perspective device, here). It's about 14 inches, top to bottom.

And close to eight feet long.

Frack.

I even did a damn gauge swatch. It was supposed to be about 5, 5 1/2 feet. Comfortable to wrap up in, but, you know, not actually long enough to TRIP OVER.

Here's another size-perspective device.

If it were symmetrical, it'd be a dandy table runner.

But, alas....I wasn't trying to knit a table runner. And as a shawl...well...

So I can't decide what to do with this. I might just keep it as a scarf. I might rip it out and start over again. I started knitting a new one, but I pulled this green mohair out of my stash to use and I'm a little worried. I was thinking "frothy" and I have a bad feeling it might come out looking more along the lines of "Muppet pelt". And it's sure not washable. I may just stop and pick up a couple skeins of Homespun on my way home tomorrow. Every prayer shawl ministry on Earth seems to make that stuff work.

A Happy Single People Awareness Day to you

Ah, Valentine's Day.

So I'd been meaning to swipe adopt this Love Thursday thing from Barb for a while, because I like the idea - what I got from her blog (Barb, correct me if I'm wrong here) was that somebody at some point declared that Thursdays were a day for accentuating the positive and discussing what all is good. What I got from a quick Google search trying to decipher the origins of this thing is this, that the original charter was from two women who don't seem to be blogging anymore who advocated the posting of pictures reminiscent (see, this is why I need the spell checker to start working again!) of hearts and love and loving things. Eh, whatever. I like my interpretation. And it seems (again from said Google search) that many other Bloggers out there share my take on the topic.

I thought about being all "different" and going with Love Tuesday or something like that, but since it happens to be Valentine's day, and I discovered I was writing a whole post full of things I love, it seemed like a good time to initiate Love Thursday on my own blog.

So, without further adieu, here's ten random things I love today:

1. My dog. You know that I could not possibly initiate something called Love Thursday without starting with my dog.

The rest are in no particular order or actual relevance to my life. Obviously.

2. Oprah. I have been an Oprah resister for a very long time. I roll my eyes when people say "I saw this or that on Oprah". Please, Oprah. I mean, I'm from Chicago, where Oprah is even more of an institution than she is in the rest of the world. But come on, she's just Oprah. She's so overdone and really, what-ever. And so then I'm quarantined and trapped in my apartment home sick all week, right, and my aunt, the one who isn't really my aunt but I grew up with them and they live down the street from me now and who is a HUGE Oprah fan, is like, oh! You have to watch Oprah! She's on every day at four! Alright! Okay! Bye! (That's how she ends every phone conversation. I also love having them so close, in case you missed that)

I'm hooked. ::sigh:: I'm so going to have way too many things piling up on the DVR that I'm never, ever going to have time to watch...

3. That Oprah did a whole big segment on shelter dogs as part of her Valentine's Day show. That, truly, is what did me in.

4. Sassy comebacks. Like this line, from the episode of CSI I'm watching right now. Kathryn and Warrick have just shown up at a scene thinking they were working a missing persons case, and discovered that the missing Paul Sorenson was in fact, a painting, not a person. And the homeowner looks at them and says, like they should've known, "Paul Sorenson was an artist." And Warrick says to Kathryn, "Yeah? What does he know about the forensic analysis of a friction ridge?"

5. This line, from this email I got today. Apparently NaBloPoMo rides again, on a month-by-month basis, encouraging members to blog daily for a month on the given theme of the month (i.e., March is "lists"). And in their email they say,

This is not the same as Blog365 (http://blog365.ning.com). Those nuts are blogging every day FOR A YEAR.

Please. I've been called a nut for lesser things than that.

6. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens.

7. My new felting buddy. Look, there he is on the washer!


So you know I've been having trouble felting with the frontloader. And yesterday, I finally managed to finish a project I've been working on (that is several months overdue and no, I can't show you yet, 'cause it's a gift), and was like, crap, how am I going to felt this? And I haven't really liked the results I got with the complex's Speed Queen. And my afore mentioned Oprah-loving aunt has offered me her washer, but you know, if you're not a knitter, and you've not felted before, you don't really know what you're getting into, what with all the fuzz and wet wool and whatnot. So I started thinking. I used to toss my Downy Ball in for added agitation. And I thought, hmm. Maggie's not really the tennis ball type, but I bet we've got something...

It's an old toy. She doesn't really like it anyway. I? Love it. It felted, um, my felting project, SO WELL. Oh, my gosh, it was a beautiful thing. I can't wait to show you how this thing turned out.

8. Crusty pox. I have TWO pox now that are all crusted over. Hooray!!! Finally.

9. This quote, which I found on the Center for Mindful Eating website:

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
- Epictetus, Greek philosopher

Sage advice. And further proof that way back at the beginnings of recorded history, the Greeks were still saying "just shut up and eat it."

10. Y'all. Sappy, I know, but I do.

All my scut work should be like this

We were done with our work really early today - like two hours before teaching conference. So I sat around and worked on my sock and talked knitting with my senior (the one I'm on service with, not the weird one I take call with), who's a new knitter. And then after conference, she was like, wow, I'm on call tonight, and now I wish I'd brought my knitting. And then she looks at me, and is like, hey...can you go get me something?

Hmm. Can I go to the yarn shop on a mission with someone else's money. You freakin' betcha, baby.

My only rules were "brightly colored" and to get the right needles. So I got her a skein of Encore Chunky in something brightly colored, and Crystal Palace circulars, because the needle selection was really disappointing. Actually, their whole selection was sort of disappointing today. Except for this...you know, before I left a skein of sock yarn just happened to fall into my bag....

It's from a local spinner/dyer whose yarn I totally love. The color is called Science Fiction and frankly, this is going to be my second try at the obnoxiously bright on-call socks. We'll see.

Meanwhile....I'm still really tired. Which is sad, because I missed our intern night out tonight because I fell asleep on the couch and woke up too late. Oy.

Snow and Ink

So I'm driving around doing errands this morning, and I hear this story on the radio. Apparently the chief surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale just got fired because he took a picture of a patient's penis with his cellphone during a cholecystectomy and then showed it to his friends. Horrible, right?

I'm having a little bit of trouble feeling sorry for this guy.

Yes, that was really unprofessional behavior. Yes, that was a violation of his trust and the doctor-patient relationship. Yes, the surgeon really should've known better than to create evidence. And it was jocular and silly. But...the guy had "Hot Rod" tattooed on his penis.

Not for nothin', but...hmm. Did you not think that would attract some attention? I mean, I have an unusual tattoo, too (different from a ta-tutu), and I knew when I got it that people would comment. And mine's nothing like that. So, come on, bud. What that resident did was wrong, but, really, the way he's carrying on and being all outraged and horrified is a bit...dude, you let a total stranger with a needle tattoo the words Hot Rod on your penis. Not to mention that now everyone in the literate universe knows about your, um, little secret. I? When that doc had called me, would've been like, fine, sir, whatever, let's just never mention this again.

We're not even going to talk about the number of times I photographed women's genitalia during surgery when I was a GYN resident because they had some clinically interesting or relevant finding. A couple of those pictures even got published, I think, in a journal article, of one woman's vulvar cancer. Not the same thing, I know, but, I'm not sure we told very many of those people we'd taken pictures of their cooch. Our ability to take photographs during surgery is in the standard release form. Now, I concede that the "clinical utility" of these Mayo photographs is questionable, and I was either taking them with the hospital's digital camera or a laparoscope, not a cell phone...but anyway...

In other news, it's snowing in North Carolina.

I think it's sort of funny. In the few hours since I started this post we've actually had some accumulation. We're supposed to get more tomorrow. Maybe it will keep people home and make for an easier call night? A call girl can only hope.

And in still other news, Tiny Tyrant sent me some very cool sock yarn in a yarn swap. Which I promptly tied into a great big knot (with the help of my ball winder) that took me two episodes of Bones to untangle today.

It's very cool. I'll post more about it later now that it's in actual balls and I have a tiny bit of it knit up. Maybe I'll have some time to write tomorrow (keep your fingers crossed for me), but right now, I've got to get to bed....