Week(end) in (short) review

So, I had this great idea to summarize my weekend in Haiku. However, after much thought (minutes, at least) I decided against it. Maybe I'll defile an ancient Japanese art form later.

This weekend wasn't bad at all. The work week was hard. There was one day where I seemed to be the only doc who showed up on time for clinics and ended up having the responsibility of chipping away at the long queue of indigent patients alone, without knowing when, and if, my co-residents or attending will show. What made this particularly intimidating is that I am in the unique position here in CA where I need complete back-up from a UCSD attending - I can't even sign my own Rx's or sign the clinic's discharge orders letting the patients leave after being seen! So, as a result, each patient I saw remained in the mobile unit or clinic office, waiting in a little line to be re-seen or staffed before they were able to get their cough syrup, asthma inhaler, or clean bill of health (whichever the case may be). Thankfully everyone who was supposed to show up eventually did. And, though patients were needlessly waiting, at least they had somewhere warm and dry to wait because that day was a particularly rainy and cold one.

After all that, my Dad and step mom, Julie (above), who were delightfully in town for a couple days, spirited me up to Laguna beach to visit with Julie's brother, Daniel (with me, playing imaginary chess at left - I'm so winning). We walked, window-shopped, ate. It was very relaxing and nice to see my family for the first time since early fall.

Sunday Jeanne and I went downtown for the Chinese New Year festival. Last weekend (was that just last weekend?) we went to the Vietnamese Tet Festival. This event was less a carnival (like Tet) and more a street fair with vendors and Chinese food and, of course, a cultural show (see dancers below) that went on all day with everything from dancing tots to Kung Fu. Reminded me of the Chinese dances I had the pleasure of learning and performing back in the Biorhythms days. It was very festive and a beautiful day.

Then, to top it all off, today, thanks to our forefathers, I had the day off. Bad news: it was cold, overcast and dreary. Good news: I wasn't working. I sat around and read (am very disappointed with my Pulitzer-prize winning book - 1985 must've been a slow year for fiction), wrote ramblings in my journal and stared blankly into space while I tried desperately to keep warm. I think my lazy day was partly due to the awful night sleep I had. In fact, "sleep" is a bit generous for what I did last night. I had terrible nightmares and really vivid dreams. I would blame it on something I ate, however, I seriously doubt sliced cheese and vegetables were the cause of such torment. I think part of it was a movie I had seen, Paris je t'aime. It was an interesting movie, with really only a couple violent or disturbing scenes. My theory: I haven't watched much TV or movies lately so the visual images must've lit some sort of subconscious fuse and BLAM! my cortex went haywire.


Hopefully tonight will be restful, for this promises to be a hard week as well. Hopefully by the end I'll have completed my research project for this rotation. God I hope so, since the data collection alone for this thing has been absolute torture and drudgery. Who knew it would take three days and five times as many phone calls to get M&M data for San Diego County?