“It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.” - Sir William Osler






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"Fra-JEEL-e!"


Thanks to Hall of the Revels for linking to the annual Washington Post Marshmallow Peeps Diorama Contest. This is what Easter is all about. My personal favorite is #18, a reenactment from A Christmas Story (hence the quote above), but they're all good and wildly inventive. Take a look.

It's a bit out of season for me to say this, but "A Christmas Story" is one of my favorite movies, with Darrin McGavin (the father) as the highlight. It captures the eccentricities of family life and the highlights and dark sides of childhood better than any film I've seen, plus its take on life in the 1940's is pitch perfect.

Labels: Pop Culture

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The Way I'm Feeling Post-Call? Yes!




I do love these LOLCat pictures; they have one appropriate for every mood.

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Weekend Roundup

I promised myself I'd do some blogging this weekend, yet I don't have anything really exciting to tell you. I spent the weekend on call. Not so bad really, except that due to a Citrix "upgrade" I lost the ability to access office and hospital records from home, so spent a good chunk of yesterday and today at the office. This system has spoiled me - it feels so awkward not having access to patients' charts!

Citrix, in case you aren't familiar with it, is some sort of program that creates a liason between work computer systems and employees' home internet access. It turns out my sister's office uses it too. Sad to say it is somewhat temperamental and I made the weekend on-call computer types quite miserable trying to get me back on the system. As of tonight they still haven't succeeded.

Church? Didn't get there. I don't even try when I'm on call, knowing I could get paged out every five to ten minutes. I did get around to making my standby green cheesecake though, tomorrow being Saint Patrick's. V. always throws a party for St. Pat's, good Irishwoman that she is. (Since St. Patrick's Day falls during Holy Week this year I asked her if we would be celebrating in sackcloth and ashes. Her response: "Hell no.")

I did get a bit more housecleaning done, orgainizing my cookbook shelves in the kitchen and taking all the Internet recipes I've printed out for the past few years and filing them in a binder. The cookbook cupboard looks much better now.

That's it. Stay tuned for more thrilling updates.

Labels: The Doctor's Life

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A Busy Winter

I've been telling myself to post here for a while, but what with the flu decimating both patients and staff - not to mention ramping up the number of patients I see daily now that we've been on this electronic chart system for six months - it just hasn't happened. Let's review.

• About a month ago, I took a lovely but brief trip to Philadelphia specifically to see this fellow perform. Should you ever get a chance to see him, I highly recommend that you go; he is outstanding. He's going to be performing at the Hollywood Bowl this summer and my parents and I are already getting our tickets.
• On my return from said trip, I had a Hell Week where one of my office partners was out on vacation and the other was deathly ill with flu and walking pneumonia on top of it. I was sick as well but made it through the week without collapsing.
• I saw a great show in Hollywood called "Cartoon Dump," which I'll try to tell you more about later.
• I am expecting five houseguests in a month, so most of my nonworking time has been spent at home cleaning and organizing. I've thrown out or donated a ton of stuff, hung a lot of pictures and moved furniture and knick-knacks around to good result - the place is looking much better overall.

And now back to my regularly scheduled patients. More later.

Labels: The Doctor's Life

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Thanks To Mr. Gygax

I was never much of a Dungeons and Dragons player, but out of curiosity, I decided to take this quiz. (Tip of hat to Mr. Ockham)


I Am A: Lawful Neutral Human Cleric (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-8
Dexterity-10
Constitution-11
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-11
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Lawful Neutral A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs him. Order and organization are paramount to him. He may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or he may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Lawful neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you are reliable and honorable without being a zealot. However, lawful neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it seeks to eliminate all freedom, choice, and diversity in society.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Labels: Pop Culture

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