P.S.

Oh, and if you're interested, my actual journal from France, top to bottom of what I ever finished transcribing, is here. There's more somewhere, I think, but like an entire semester worth of poetry, I don't know where it's gotten to.

Ca me manque...

Went to see "l'auberge espagnole" tonight. Was good - part of the best bit of it was that it was mostly in French, and it was all about living in a foreign country, and it reminded me of France. I miss France. I miss the French, as odd and quirky as they are, even if they don't shower and don't see why we do. And I spent the evening telling stories about France, including one of my favourites of all time: The train story, here excerpted from my journal there. 12 November:

I eat my döner (always count an hour for lunch; I'm right on time) and walk up to the gare. This is why I'm a good girl. I'm going to go make reservations for Rome . The bad part is that I'm shooting for a sleeper…for the two of us, my Matthew and I. Go figure.

Someone in his 30's comments on my cloak. I respond, keep walking. I've been told that my cold act rivals a Frenchwoman's. It's a compliment indeed. I practice. He catches my accent, the hesitations over words. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? No, I say. I'm not German. English? American. Going somewhere this fine afternoon? I don't answer. School? Home? Lunch? Grandmother's house? I love my cloak. Nowhere? The train station, I give in. I'm making reservations for winter vacation. You're a tourist? A student. Want to get a coffee? No. I'm in a hurry. See you later. He vanishes. I love it. It's only when you're in full-Goth at midnight-thirty that people try to convince you to go eat/drink/sleep/stay with them. The rest of the time, they bugger off.

I get to the gare, wander around. Can't do what I want to with the automated machines. Dang. Going to have to talk to a human. I get in line. I wait for about 15-20 minutes before it's my turn. I explain to the kind gentleman behind the counter that I'll have a europass, and that I want to make reservations to Rome . He tappitas. I don't have a direct train to Rome . I take a deep breath. The train changes at Basel . Without touching a key, he looks at the screen. Oh, he says. That train. D'accord. I bite back a sarcastic comment. What day? The 18^th December. La nuit samedi-dimanche? [The night Saturday-Sunday?] Non. La nuit vendredi-samedi. [No. The night Friday-Saturdy.] D'accord. Quel train ? [OK. Which train?] I whip out the Strasbourg-Rome schedule. Minuit vingt. Ici. [ 12:20 . Right here.] He points out that the hours are only valid until 29 novembre. La dame à la boutique SNCF m'a dit qu'ils ne changent pas. [The lady at the SNCF (Société National de Chemin de Fer; the French rail system) said they wouldn't change.] Pas beaucoup. Un moment. [Not much. Just a second.] He thwaps some keys, looks confused. Un moment. Je reviens en cinq minutes. [Hang on. I'll be back in 5 minutes] I wait. He reviens with a big book, pages through it. Il roule tous les jours? [It goes every day?] Oui. He checks his computer. Il roule tous les jours, mais pas la nuit 17-18 décembre. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. [It rolls every day, but not the night 17-18 December. I don't know why.] I bite my tongue. Mon petit ami va arriver l'après-midi du 17 décembre. Nous voudrions partit aussitôt que possible. [My boyfriend arrives the afternoon of the 17^th. We want to leave as soon as possible.] He pages. Le jeudi ? [Thursday?] Le vendredi. [Friday.] D'accord. He writes. J'ai ce train ici, à 17h47 le samedi. [I have this train here, at 5:47 PM Saturday.] He demonstrates. It gets into Rome at something like 9 AM . Works for me. Mais je voudrais partir vendredi soir, [But I want to leave Friday night] I repeat for the tenth time. Tappita tappita. Vous pouvez aussi faire ça le vendredi. [You can do that Friday too.] Bon, I agree. Ça marche . Est-ce qu'il y a des voitures-lits ? [Great. That works. Are there sleeper cars?] I've been frantically seeking how to say " sleeper " in French, found it in the horaires. Oui, he says, slowly, which means that this is going to take some more time. Un moment. Tappita tappita. Je reviens en cinq minutes. He reviens, parles with another mec, the girl next to him, and I can neither hear nor understand the conversation. He has another stack of books. Page page. I have now been standing in the gare centrale at the guichet for something like half an hour, trying to make a reservation. I thought that if you knew what you wanted, it got easier. Enfin, he looks up from the books, and the computer that's giving me hives being too near it, it's so old, and shakes his head. Je vois les voitures-lits, mais je peux pas les trouver. S'il vous plait…. [I see the sleeper cars, but I can't find them. If you please…] I give him name, address, and phone number, he promises the gare will call when they find the voiture-lits for the train to Rome. I tell him one man, one woman. he writes it down. I don't mention (and I only think of it later) that I should mention that we want to travel together if possible.

I'm exhausted. I troop over to CIARUS anyway, like a good little nykkit. Matt'll have to write them. No problem. He's twenty years old…he can handle his own auberge reservations. They've got pleine de places. I go home. I go to escrime. I come home. Juliette's friend Michelle is there, and I realise I'm not going out tonight. At least I'm not washing Lego's for Juliette, who wanted to take some jouets to Viet Nam with her, and bought them at the French Salvation Army. That was a riot-Nicole, qu'est-ce que tu fais? [What are you doing?] Je suis Lego- medecin; je rassemble les corps. [I'm a Lego-doctor; I'm putting the bodies back together] Moi, j'ai pleine de têtes. [I've got lots of heads] Moi, ja'i pleine de corps. [I've got lots of bodies] Non, j'ai au moins soixante têtes. [No, I've got at least sixty heads] As- tu des mains? [Do you have hands?] Oui… ils sont pas propres. [Yes…they're not clean] Laves-les! [Wash them!] But the Lego's are gone from the salle de bains, and good thing too- Juliette leaves Tuesday. It's dinner until 11, a bottle of Cabernet-something interesting that looks half-melted and tastes smooth as anything, to accompany chilli con carne à la Michelle. Fantastic, and at midnight- ish, I crawl into bed and fall asleep.

13 November-14 November

I crawl out of bed. I realise I've been doing a lot of crawling out of bed. Oh, well. I get dressed, remembering that today's the soiree halloween at CJRS. In honour, I put on my black bodysuit and my black collar, and wish my laundry were dry so I could go in all black. I have to wear jeans. Sux, that. I leave a note for Juliette, counting on dinner late with Ko and hanging out for a while, and head out. I take time to argue with the France Telecom people, who finally, a month after I dropped off my little request, get around to inscribing me to the service I need to be inscribed to: Primaliste Pays, which is 25% off my calls to one country. Allemagne, he says, oui? Non, I contradict him. Etats-Unis. He gives me a funny look and corrects it. I haul tail to the bus stop, buy lunch at Quick. Cheeseburgers with white cheese are another thing I'll miss. They use Emmenthal, I think. Ko isn't there. I wait 15 minutes past the appointed time and hop a bus by myself. Weird, that, but I pass the time in making up a character for the heckofit. I make the stats up on the spot; they're neither sterling nor bad, but a good exercise in character balance.

I hop off, hit the club. Nicolas is the only one there, sleeping across three chairs and listening to French metal. He hops up, kiss-kiss, goes back to sleep. I settle down and do a little light work on the maps for the campaign. Eventually people arrive, we play baby foot, which is table-soccer, and Dominique and I lose a close game. It's a mélange of French and English, mostly French. Dominique runs to kill time, since the signs say soiree and Nicolas was thinking afternoon-evening. It's a silly campaign, full of cog gnomes (the pronunciation is hilarious: g- nome) and light-heartedness and fun. Luc floats in and out; Thibault plays. I'm beginning to recognise people with ease now. Séb is dressed like a mummy, and we make fun of him. It's wonderful. We play, XP's are handed out, someone comes with a few jack-o-lanterns, and Guillaume asks where's Ko? I tell the story. Everyone laughs, speculates a little. Apparently at least a few of them were under the impression that we were a couple, and I only find the chance to disabuse them of that occasionally.

Are you staying tonight? It's a ritual question, to which I ritually answer no. I say yes. I've a free evening. They ask what I want to eat. Someone pays and never tells me what I owe. I don't know how to ask. It's McDonalds, a Royal combo. I eat someone's potatoes. Luc hovers, vanishes, hovers, and vanishes. Don't know. I stay, I stay, I participate in the decision-making for Hallowe'en, it doesn't work out, and at last we wind up as a table of 6 with Manu as DM. We start at about 11. We finish at 7:30 . Séb drops me off at home at about 8. I crawl into bed.

The phone rings at 9:30 . I forget I'm in France . A confused voice asks for me, asks if I speak French. I remember I'm in France , and try to wake up enough to comprehend. It's the SNCF people. They've found a place, and can I come in tomorrow. Sure. Anything. I forget to tell them I want the places together. They sound separate right now. Mental note. I talk to Matt. It's no big, he says. We'll have a hotel room in Rome . We can sleep on the train. I'll be jetlagged anyway. I'll see.

I go back to sleep, wake up at 3, clean the room top to bottom, do a little homework, marvel that I've not cashed a traveller's cheque yet this month, talk to Matt a little, find out that the ATM rates are excellent, and that the fee is only a dollar. Love it. I feel productive. I kill time, trying to reset my sleep schedule. It's 2 AM when I crawl into bed, still awake. Class at 9 AM . Havens forfend.

15 November

I make it to class, on time and all, somehow. I hate language block, anyway, and labo's worse. But it's out at noon . I hit the Döner place on my way back to the gare. I'm skipping Logique for the second week in a row, only last week it was because Ko and I found a really cool parc and wandered around it for an hour and a half, guessing which parts were original and which were reconstructed on this gigantic citadel wall. The big game was whether we were inside or outside, since it meandered something awful. Today, I'm going to the gare encore. I get my döner to go and keep hiking. I polish it off somewhere around les Halles and take my jacket off. It's too nice out…I cram the winter coat that I needed this morning into my backpack. I look like a backpacker. I don't care. I get to the gare and present myself at guichet 15, like I was told. It's occupied. I wait. There's a fermé sign but the guy appears to be working anyway. I wait till he's done, say Excuse me. He extends a finger, points to the fermé sign. I explain that I was to present myself at guichet 15. He motions to guichet 14. Bemused, I present myself at guichet 14.

The guy there is great. It's a good French day, too. I'm whipping out responses and comprehending everything he says. He's not slowing down either. I explain that I had trouble reserving a voiture-lit, and that I want to go to Rome the night of the 17^th December. Friday night to Saturday, he says. Yes, I agree. He hits a few keys. A night train, he confirms. Yes, I say. He assumes I want the only extant night train. Smart man. Travelling with a man or a woman? A man. What class is your Europass, he asks. Second, I reply. All youth railpasses are second class. We have voiture-lits, he says, but the problem is that in second class, we only have tourist ones. They're three people to a car, single sex. Or a family. So I need to borrow a child, I muse. Exactly, he answers. I say the problem is that my fiancé-I'm about to continue, but he gets a look on his face. I understand. For the next five minutes I watch a flurry of French activity. He tries everything. He finally says there are voiture-lits for two, but they're in first class. The fee to reserve them is 395 francs per person. Per person. Yes. And you'd have to buy a first-class supplement to your pass. I wince. He pauses. Do you know what sleeping cars are like? No, not really, I admit. He produces the super-cool binder of all the European trains and their toys. I get a crash course in how to sleep while travelling on a train. We finally decide that on our limited budget, it's going to be easiest to go with couchettes, which are 6 to a room, mixed gender, total strangers, but Matt can sleep. He goes to reserve. He mutters. He tries seven or eight different things. He turns to me. There's a problem. He turns his monitor so I can see. It flickers and goes all purple. I react. He says it's normal. I say it's not normal at all. He says no, really, and flicks it with his finger. It returns to normal. He shows me where the column with voiture-lits is, the couchettes column, all that. There are these letters and question marks under them. I say what does that mean? He explains that the computer's confused. He can't reserve, even. I say why not. He picks up the phone. I'll check with Switzerland . It's a Swiss train. He chats with the guy on the other end. He turns back to me. The Swiss have put some sort of embargo on reservations from other countries. What? Why? They're Swiss. It might work tomorrow. Listen, I say. I have these other trajets. Will I have this sort of trouble with all of them? No, he says. We usually don't have trouble with Spain . Italy ? Yes. Especially during the season change. Do you know your travel dates? Yes. Bring them in when you come back and we'll do them all here. Good. What do I do now? You call and see whether reservations can be made. Here's the number. I leave, bemused to say the least.

18 November

No luck yet on the tickets. Tuesday they were on grève, which is what French professionals do when they get bored, I guess. Today, no answer at the station. Tomorrow, maybe…The day passes quietly. Juliette is gone. I'm forced to cook creatively. Tuesday it was veggie-shrimp spaghetti, Wednesday two pre-bible-study döners (bible Study on Gideon. Pauvre Erin, who got the hideous Hebrew place names for her section to read out loud, and stumbled over them. She didn't get it later when the leader stumbled over the same names, said something to the effect of those are hideous. I'm so sorry. We all laughed. She thought it was at her expense...) and the half-pitcher of Kronenbourg and raspberry syrup I split with Harry while eyeing the garçon at Route 66 and flirting with Benoit, who's a French med student in his first year and came with Harry and Jesse. Today was a potato-tuna-veggie-rice casserole with leftovers for the lazy. I go out with Michelle the evening, drink castillo rosé and chat. It's a good day, even if I'm going to be up too late again and Matt goes home for a week tomorrow.

24 November

I crawl out of bed, refusing to accept that the apartment is so cold my nose is forming icicles. I'm supposed to meet Michelle at noon , and I don't want to. We're going to the Gare to get hours for the train to Bonneval-sur-arc, my chosen cute lil' village. I plan to go there and study a couple things, take pictures, go home. I check my e-mail, check ICQ. There's a message from Watson. It turns out to be from Watson's girlfriend, who wants me to send her a postcard. I'm not sure how to take this, or what to write. I mean, it's great that this girl doesn't hate me for being some sort of psycho, but what do you write to your ex-boyfriend's first girlfriend in three years? I note the address, decide to deal with it when my brain thaws out-it is cold in this building-and head out. I hit the cathédrale for a while, act like a Catholic and cross myself, pray at the saints' statues, look at the preparations. The whole place de la cathédrale is full of little wooden boxes, the stands for the Marché de Noël, the Christkindelmarkt, the Christmas Market, which was explained to me as one of the oldest in Europe . It's a big deal. People are prepping their boxes, stringing lights, taking up all the space. I can't wait. The beggar-woman at the cathédrale asks for money. I'm cold and ignore her. I feel French today.

I grab a Döner at the place I always go to. My carte de fidelité is pleine, I get the döner free. Woohoo! The guy hops up when I enter at 11:30 , he's been eating lunch with the family. I bonjour, they bonjour, I ça va, they ça va. I apologise for disturbing their lunch. They say it's okay. I order my döner, he completes the order for me, says have a seat. I say I've got to get it to go. No problem, he says. Have a seat. I sit. He stuffs a piece of bread into his mouth, starts making the sandwich. I love French hygienic practises. The board of health would hurt these people. I take my döner and go, wander past the New Sex sex shop, hang out outside Michelle's workplace until noon . We faire our bise and head up to the gare. We decide to walk, since it's warm enough to have melted all the snow that used to be all over the city. We hike up to the gare and nip in. I sit down at guichet 15. The guy asks if I'm doing train-hotel. I say no, but the other guy said I could be here. He says fine at last, after a bit more back-and- forthing. I say all I have is a question. Can you make couchette reservations for the Basel-Rome night train? He taps some, says what day? The 17^th-18^th, I say. Yes, he says. I can. Good, I say. Make them. He does. They cost a little more than I expected, but I can deal with that. It's not too bad, about $22/person. Couchette tickets in hand, I verify five times that I've got the right day, the right train. I hand over my credit card, watch it go through. I'm ecstatic. I decide to try the rest of the trip now that I'm in a good mood.

Bad decision. It is crucial to be in a bad mood when one goes to the gare to buy billets for anything. The people at the gare, contrary to the idea that they are there to serve and help, are not actually there to work. They are there to look helpful and block you in every way possible from travelling anywhere. I explain to the nice young lady that I know where I want to go, but that I don't have the horaires. She says, give me the dates and I'll look them up. I give her the dates: Rome to Avignon the 20-21 Dec, Avignon to Madrid the 22-23 Dec, Madrid to Paris the 28-29 Dec. I figure Paris to Strasbourg I can do later. She writes them down. I read upside-down so I can correct her. She writes them all correctly. She takes them back to a little computer, one of the kind that give me hives, and tappitas for a while. She comes back with schedules. We start with Rome- Avignon. There are two options, she explains, handing me an 8 ½ by 11" sheet of paper. They call it A4 here, which is a name I don't understand at all, but that's irrelevant. I notice the little DB in a box in the upper right hand corner, don't think anything of it. It's later that Michelle and I figure out that it means Deutsche Bahn, the German rail system. That explains why the price unit is DM. I love this. The trip will last approximately 13:25 , about what I expected. Option 1 takes me Roma Ostiense to Nice, Nice to Avignon . I like that. Option 2 takes me Roma Termini to Milano Centrale, Milano Centrale to Lyon Part Dieu, Lyon Part Dieu to Avignon . Plus, it's all day, not all night. I go for option 1. Make the reservations, I say. For two, for couchettes. Do you want couchettes? Yes. I maintain a reasonable tone of voice. I hate repeating myself every time. You need tickets? she asks. We have Europasses, I say. You just need the reservation, then, she says. I said reservation, didn't I? I agree with her. She tries it. I can't, she says. You can't. Now it's me repeating her words. No, she says. I can't. You'll have to go to Italy to do that. Italy . Italy . Why. This is not a question. They're Italian, she says. Right. I'll do that in Italy .

Next train: Avignon to Madrid . There aren't any, she says. I repeat her words, carefully. There aren't any. I refrain from mentioning that there is no way that trains can go into Avignon and out of Madrid and not do the inverse, and that they must meet somewhere. I don't feel like arguing with this woman. I simply stare stupidly at her for a long moment. She stares back with the patented French- gare-worker stare, which says "I'm doing everything I can for you, and it's not my fault you didn't know what train you wanted when you came in, and don't give me that there must be a train between these two cities shit, because there isn't." I say not even one that changes somewhere? I'm hoping it's like the Strasbourg-Rome story. Non, she repeats without even looking back at the computer, aucun. I still don't believe her.

Next train: Madrid to Paris . I have another Deutsche Bahn A4 printout, and a little ticket-sized SNCF printout. The SNCF printout is the Talgo. This is a fabulously expensive hotel-train that goes direct from Madrid to Paris in 13 hours, and will cost 395F each, on top of the Europass. For-get it. She says you've got these two trains. The first thing I notice is that she's printed out the wrong date. I wanted to go the 28^th, I say, and this is the 22^nd. She checks. It still works, she says. The second thing I notice is that the duration for voyage 1 is 31 hours, and the duration for voyage 2 is 26 hours. This seems strange to me. I mutter about how long it is. She doesn't get the hint. Shall I make those reservations for you, she asks. Non, I say, pas encore. I have to talk about it with my fiancé. I understand, she says. I take the horaires. Thank you, I say. The pleasure's mine, she says. I mutter. She smiles. I walk off. It's only 1 PM . We decide to take the tram out to Auchan (last night, Michelle taught me how to spell Auchan, and I'm thrilled to pieces), to find an answering machine. We go down to the tram stop. They're on grève today. Apparently, this happens often enough that there's a special picture for the monitor. The bus and tram people are on grève, and there's no bus and no tram. We walk back to BCA. I tell my story, examine for the first time the itinerary I was given for the Madrid-Paris trip, and realise why it's so long. The itinerary is reproduced below, for convenience:

		Voyage 1	Voyage 2
Madrid - Atocha	Dé	9:00	9:00
Valencia Estacio d.N	Ar	12:35	12:35
Valencia Estacio d.N	Dé	13:10	13:10
Figueras	Ar	18:14	18:14
Figueras	Dé	22:17	22:17
Lausanne	Ar	||	6:41
Lausanne	Dé	||	7:41
Torino Porta Susa	Ar	7:30	||
Torino Porta Susa	Dé	10:43	||
Paris - Lyon	Ar	16:11	11:10
Durée		31h 11m	26h 10m

Out come the Michelin Guides Vertes for France , Spain , and Europe . I know without looking that Lausanne is in Switzerland , and that Figueras is not in France , wherever it may be. Torino Porta Susa sounds Italian, and I am having a hard time believing that this is all real. I start looking. I finally find all of the cities, and can't believe what I'm seeing.

Geographically, it makes sense to go from Madrid (central Spain ) to Valencia (eastern coast, slightly south of Madrid ) as a first leg. I understand that. I understand that it's faster to go around the Pyrenées than over them. What I would next expect would be going through Barcelona to Paris . No. The train crosses back to the other side of the country. After searching diligently, I find Figueras. It's a little nowhere town on the north coast of Spain . After nine hours of train ride, not only am I still in Spain, I've completely traversed the country one and a half times, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the train from Valencia to Figueras goes through Madrid, since Valencia is east and slightly south, and Figueras is north and slightly west of Madrid. I have a five-hour layover in Figueras, which hardly even warrants a paragraph in Michelin, and that as a possible side trip from some other city, and that only if you're bored, and then I get on a train again. Option 1: I then go to Torino Porta Susa, which (my suspicions confirmed) is in Italy . I then go from Italy to Paris . Apparently, Spanish trains don't stop in France . Option 2: I then go to Lausanne , which is in Switzerland , and a hefty train ride (says Michelle) from Strasbourg even. I then go to Paris . Every one of the little trains requires a supplement. I can't believe this is going on.

All I can think is that it takes less than twenty-six hours to go from London to Prague , and I'm supposed to take this long to go to Paris from Madrid . I'm bewildered. I go to class, cut out early as always, take a test in Provincial Cultural Studies, discuss the art of the table. There are more rules for how to put things, and they're different from in the States. Like the direction the fork goes. And if you're a vegetarian, don't accept invitations, because it's terribly grave to refuse anything you're offered. It's a mess. I can't believe they care this much. But it's only formal dinners, which, she advises us, it is wise to not eat anything the day before so that you can eat enough at the dinner.

Class ends, we take off, I smoke a Marlboro on the way to meet Ko with Erin and Christy, smoke another on the way up to the highway. Ko nearly has apoplexy at the sight of me with a cigarette. I don't plan to make it a habit, but I think I'll get lung cancer from the second-hand smoke if I spend any more time in bars anyway, so I might as well get some of the thrill. No real buzz, just a non-hungry feeling, and the taste of smoke in my mouth, the smell on my fingers. I don't really get it. Ko and I discuss fashion, and what ghetto fabulous means, and skanky, and I learn all about his world, he learns about hard-rock heavy-metal fashion and mine. I leave them at the highway.

I go home, make rice, read a letter from my Matthew which makes the whole day worthwhile, eat dinner (non-inclusive of the rice) and throw the rice in the fridge for another time. I aspirated yesterday, feel clean, read a little of a translated Silverberg and make my way slowly through it. It's hard, but much better than the other was. I hit the net, spend too much time online, and discover the following: There exists a train from Avignon to Madrid , and it changes at Barcelona . There is a train from Madrid to Paris that changes at Hendaye. The total travel time is only about 13 or 14 hours. I am vindicated. I call Matt, resolve to pay my phone bill tomorrow if I can find a Poste to pay it at, remember I'm going out tomorrow evening, must put together my exposé over a topic I've not yet chosen for Friday. I wonder, can't think of anything, keep wondering. Thanksgiving dinner followed by Kate's birthday, means I have to come up with something by 1600. I type out my journal, realise it's 2 AM, check my tickets encore to make sure they're the right day, realise that the SNCF has a website, wonder if maybe, just maybe I could do my reservations there, and head off to bed.

 

I'm Jean Valjean!
(No, really.) Some people may see me as a little sanctimonious, but though I care deeply about doing right, I'm not above a little skulduggery in a good cause. Being in touch with my spiritual side doesn't make me an easy target... on the contrary, in fact. Which Les Miserables Character Are You?

And Snackin' Jesus. I have to admit, he does look like he's getting a Snickers or something. Today is a frustrating day. I'm feeling very sociable, I have only a few days of vacation, and I have to spend them at home, alone, and nobody seems to be interested in making any plans to do anything. Is very sad, and I find myself wishing I were back on the south end, so I could just go drop in on Bri or hang out with dad. I'm almost to the point of going to the mall just for some social interaction. I should go anyway, pick up .hack//sign and daredevil and spend some more money. Get a blank tape to tape the Fox special tonight. But first I think I'll eat, and organise the tupperware, which seems to be spreading into other cabinets despite my requests.

Today, I am a link-whore...

Even in nature, jocks don't always come out on top... I particularly like the note that virgin quail females picked the winners, but those with some sexual experience tended to choose the losers. The Vatican, surprise surprise, is encouraging its lawmakers to fight gay marriage legislation. And the new wave of privacy questions: What about spying on your spouse online? Me, I just roleplay. And Angel reads over my shoulder half the time. In health news: a new gel that may prevent the spread of HIV, and possibly genital herpes and chlamydia too. The biggest benefit: it puts control in the hands of the woman if she chooses. And a new makeover show...Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on the Bravo network. In which gay men teach straight men to be stylish and socially adept. I have got to see if we have Bravo, especially since the Traditional Values Coalition wants it off the air...

While there is some stereotyping at work in "Queer Eye," Collins emphasizes that each of the style mavens -- dubbed the "fab five" -- stands on their professional credentials and not their sexual orientation. "We were very specific about the fact that just because you're gay doesn't give you style, taste and class," Collins said. "Just because you get your gay card doesn't mean you know how to arrange flowers." The pros include food and wine connoisseur Ted Allen, co-author of Esquire magazine's "Things a Man Should Know" column, and Thom Filicia, named by House Beautiful magazine as one of America's top designers. Culture maven Jai Rodriguez, "grooming guru" Kyan Douglas and fashion sage Carson Kressley round out the advisory board.

So, the word is out that American teenagers are smoking less, drinking less, having fewer babies, and getting fatter.... And the strangest name yet: Goveg.com. One for : A preschool for deaf and hearing kids that teaches entirely in sign; no spoken accompaniment. And one for Mom, who doesn't read my cuts: The No Child Left Behind Act - federal standards imposed on schools without corresponding federal funding. How Bush.

I long to sail the path to the moon...

what flavor pocky are you?
[c] sugardew

How do I know I'm a bibliophile? I woke up this morning from the second part of a two-night dream. The first part, last night, was all about scrambling to win a contest (of the "how-well-do-you-know-your-classics" variety) in order to get a whole crate of old stuff. Tonight was about having won, and the dream was all about unpacking everything. It was all books and book-related materials: old pens, parchment, inkwells, and the like, precisely what has faded from my mind. But the crowning joy was a four-part folio containing four original hand-written scores from four 1920's musicals whose titles were so nonsensical as to be only plausible in a dream world. I dreamed about lifting each one out, carefully, with gloved fingers, and leafing through the scores, humming the tunes and exulting in the beauty of aged paper and ink. The smell, the feel, the sight... It's not normal to have a please-don't-wake-me dream about old musical scores, is it? Got up this morning, went to Iwona's, and showed her how to upload her files to the IUSM database. Now she won't lose them. Almost went home, but I'd had the foresight to throw my bag into the car, so I went to Curves and worked out. Went light today; I'm still sore from yesterday and all the strength training machines except abs really should be every other day. Now back home, thinking I'll take a shower and then finish cleaning the bathroom, as well as starting work on making the downstairs presentable for the youth on Friday. Movie this evening at seven with and anyone else who wants to come. Shall we do dinner first?

A random collection of links.

Nicole is the #68 most common female name.
0.281% of females in the US are named Nicole.
Around 358275 US females are named Nicole!
source namestatistics.com

Suzanne is the #153 most common female name.
0.145% of females in the US are named Suzanne.
Around 184875 US females are named Suzanne!
source namestatistics.com

Keim is the #5817 most common last name.
0.002% of last names in the US are Keim.
Around 5000 US last names are Keim!
source namestatistics.com

Boersma is the #25784 most common last name.
0.0005% of last names in the US are Boersma.
Around 1250 US last names are Boersma!
source namestatistics.com

Well, at least something about me is less than common :P
You are "Welcome to the Caribbean, love."
You're more than a little world-weary, but also
intelligent and you keep your head when things
get dodgy. You're everybody's favorite
drinking buddy, but your stubbornness does get
in the way sometimes.

Which one of Captain Jack Sparrow's bizarre sayings from Pirates of the Caribbean are you?
brought to you by Quizilla Chosen from the alternatives, I like it. Although the pictures have nothing to do with the quotes, they're just much yummy swishiness. The shortest divorce court yet... And the newest personality test: I'm an apparently intelligent, liberal, disgustingly generous, pathetically simple-minded, dribbling child!
See how compatible you are with me!
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey Just for : The Bush captionator :)

My crappy little elf name is Juniper Horsebeard.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

And the best part was the text: Can you feel it? You seem smaller ... faster ... pointier ... elfier. You too can ride horses in fictitious English countryside settings while spouting utterly wooden, pretentious lines, wishing you were back at home smoking a bowl instead of questing with two hairy toadpeople who clearly wish they were smoking eachother.

My Iraqi Leadership Name is al-Mashhadani Fulayyih.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

That's the short and powerful one. I like it.
Which Famous Homosexual are you?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey Leonardo. Yum.

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Wankmaster Lobos.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

And I think that's enough, right there... Have done little today. Went to Curves. Got my name changed with Suncoast. Cleaned the stove and the kitchen table. Must meet Iwona around 9ish tomorrow, so I suppose staying up late is probably not the best idea. Maybe, once I'm out and about, I'll get to Curves again tomorrow. Making plans with people, hoping they all come together. Dieu merci.

And some business items:

Firstly, a note welcoming , , and to the ranks. I think I know where you all found my journal, so I'm not disturbed for once. There was someone else who added me a while back, but I don't remember who you were, so I apologise. Secondly, kudos to anyone who can tell me where the icon on this post and the two previous is from, just for a random anime quiz. Thirdly. Roleplayers: This week is movie night, and we're having it at our place. Plan to arrive for RP between 9 and 9:30 if at all possible, so that the youth will have cleared out, but we'll still have time to RP. We will be feeding the youth, and thus will have only the usual fridge-leftovers or eating on your own to provide for your culinary needs.

Ideas that disturb me.

Careful, my liberalism is showing. A constitutional amendment to make marriage a union between one male and one female. Never mind that marriage as a legal institution is not the same as marriage as a religious institution, or you wouldn't have to sign the paperwork. Never mind that it's discriminatory and unlawful to refuse a contract based on the gender of the signers, and that legally marriage should be just that - a contract of financial and legal responsibility. Dubya has an agenda. And the new Patriot Act. Mostly because it seems to be a behemoth bill of all of the pet projects to allow the government to run unrestrained by public interference, no matter what sort of climate we're in. Mrowr. I need to take a shower, do something today, and get to Curves at 3 when it opens again, so I can be ready to go to Choirchimes tonight.

The good, the bad, and the ugly...

I left the ER on a mingled note last night. The last patient I saw, at six minutes to four, needed a pelvic exam. And a quantitative HCG done. She's bleeding and cramping and six weeks pregnant. She was seen two days ago, and it was guessed then that she had a missed abortion. A note, O Best Beloved: Abortion as a medical term is the spontaneous expulsion of an embryo or foetus before twelve weeks of age, whereas miscarriage is any time after that and before the foetus is viable. We use "abortion", and it scares people. It does not mean we think they did it. So I did the pelvic, and the crevix was closed, but she was bleeding fairly well, and the HCG came back 5,000 less than it had been, and that was the diagnosis. She wanted me to stay until they'd decided whether she should go back to Canada and her husband or seek a referral here. So I didn't leave until nearly 5:30. We're referring them here. Otherwise, the day was filled with the good: Sent to see a 25-year-old male whose complaint was urgency (having to pee a lot) and blood in his urine. R. is a Navy Recruiter, positively delicious, and very nice. He also had no symptoms other than blood in his urine. No pain, no burning, no irritation, nothing that could tell me right off the bat that he had a UTI. So Dr. K tells me to rule out prostatitis. Why, O Best Beloved, does my very first rectal exam on a patient have to be on someone this fucking hot? And I could see it in his eyes, the same question everyone wonders about: "How old is she?" I had two more people today tell me they doubted I was older than seventeen, which would hardly make me legal to even see this guy's naked ass. I did the rectal, found nothing, didn't even elicit a yelp, so his prostate was nontender. Dr. K reminded me of the one other thing that can cause bloody urine: rhabdomyolysis. Basically, when muscle is destroyed, it releases myoglobin, which looks just like blood to the naked eye. And bingo, his CK was 2800, his dipstick test was positive for blood >250, and his micro came back with 6-15 RBC's. Rhabdo. So I explained it to him, and we sent him to the FP residents, and that was how my day began. Then there was the boy who tried to swat a wasp and put his hand through a window. Calm as could be, not crying or bitching or anything, just waiting for it to get stitched up. He was a sweetheart. The bad: Little girl fell off some playground equipment and broke her arm. Both bones, same place she broke it last year. Only bad because she was so miserable. Gentleman came in at the end of my shift. I didn't treat him; I was already late. He was bright yellow. About that shade. Obvious, unmissable liver failure. He looked like he was dying. He looked like he was going to make his last stay in the hospital ever. That was sad. K came in after having his foot run over by a one-ton piece of equipment at the construction site. Dr. K looked over as he was brought in. "Kidney stone?" Me: No, foot run over. Dr. K: Oh, I was sure it was a kidney stone from the racket. Looks like a fracture that's going to take surgery and still maybe not turn out right. The ugly: When I came in, we had Dr. K, me, Dr. M, who's a new intern with FWFP and doing a rotation in the ER (I duly cultivated her, O Best Beloved), and C. One doctor to staff two students and an intern, who wasn't much more competent than I was. We rotated through the patients, more or less, until he told us to slow down a bit, as he was getting overwhelmed. Then J came in and we could pass C off to her, so it was just us two and Dr. K. But for a while, it was just a mess, and I didn't get to see as many patients as usual. Also, Dr. K, when we're busy, just automatically hands any suturing jobs over to the PA's, which meant C and J got lots, but I did none of the five jobs that came in. Sad. And then there was the slug-lady. Bear with me, O Best Beloved, I was just most disturbed by this woman. She had bariatric surgery in September, and is now down to 350 lbs from 475 (one of the nurses raised a brow. "Slow loser. I've lost 90 since February"). She readily admits that she doesn't follow her diet, so she eats too much still, gets nauseated, and just takes Reglan. She fills to overflowing the hospital bed like some sort of oversized slug, with about the same willingness to move to enable me to do even the most basic of physical exams. She complains of spiking fevers, chills, constant nausea from eating too much, and pain in her chest and left flank. Actually, she's just sore everywhere. And she's a Software Engineer, on top of it all. I did the exam and took her history, had her nurse take her temperature (98.3 on triage) again when she started to shake (100, then), and went back to talk to Dr. K about her. "Get a cathed urine. She sounds like she has a UTI," he says after doing his physical. And then the nurse comes back. Did either of you, she wants to know, get a look downstairs? No, we admit. We concentrated on the complaints she had. Wego back in. Grossly health-threatening obesity, while something I find a constant reminder of why I need to go out to Curves and curtail my incessant snacking, I can deal with. We're the first or second-fattest state in the nation. What I find revolting is grossly health-threatening obesity combined with stench. On exam, this woman's entire pelvic area was covered in open or scabbed-over sores, from waist down. She had an extra lobe of fat that we had to lift out of the way to examine her vaginal area, some sort of lipoid modesty panel (she's going to see a plastic surgeon to get it removed), and it seemed to protect her vagina itself from the sort of fetid wasteland that was the rest of her regional skin. She had tissue stuffed into the folds of her fat, and it all stunk to high heaven. Maybe, Dr. K says, this is the source of her fevers. We continued. Both legs were wrapped in bandages. One looked red, swollen, and painful. We unwrapped it. How long has your leg been like this? Oh, she says, the cellulitis? A while. Have you been seeing Dr. L about it? Yes, she says. I have a hard time believing this, O Best Beloved, because I worked with Dr. L and he was a very competent doctor. That leg should've been on IV antibiotics a month ago, not to mention the rest of her below-the-waist culture plate. So she's in the hospital now, for wound care and IV antibiotics, and I am thoroughly disgusted. Obesity I can handle, and I can respect people who are trying to do something about it and failing. Having surgery to reduce your stomach size and then still insisting on stuffing your face until it makes you sick...that bothers me. And the Jerry-Springer-esque epilogue to her story: She is 61. Her daughter is 40. Her daughter is marrying a man, now 58, who was her mother's lover when she was a little girl, back when they were in their 20's. Mom is very happy about this, as she knows what a great man her daughter is marrying, but she isn't going to go to the ceremony because "it's very small and private". She's just thrilled that her daughter, who is a municipal judge in a well-known city in Texas, isn't going to marry one "of those cowboys", because you have to marry someone who's your intellectual and social equal. That weirded me out. And then I was talking to nurse H. You know, she tells me, she wanted me to go out and get her son from the lobby (not an uncommon request), and I told her that she should wait a bit, because we had to expose her again and get an EKG (which requires lying around naked to the waist for a bit). "No, that's fine," she says to me. "My son bathes me every day." Maybe that explains the filth of her perigenital region, but her son is in his 40's, too, and apparently has no life other than taking care of his mother. And bathing her. I need to know, O Best Beloved. Am I being intolerably closed-minded in being revolted by this woman's story and physical condition (mind, I was as thorough on physical exam as I would be with anyone else, despite the nauseating stench of her revealed sores; I did not and do not intend to short my patients on care), or is there a point at which it is acceptable to marvel at the depths to which humanity can fall?

T-minus one day...

I got my shower in before going to the ER today. I'm glad, I needed it. For a while, it was me and Iwona, C and B and Dr. E and Dr. W all crammed into one little station. (Jesse, the guy who cleans the floors and is super sweet and very nice, told me that the doctors' station in the new part is much bigger and very open.) And then people left, and it was me and B and Dr. W and Dr. H, and we were a happy little party. Watched B pull an 1/8th-inch wire out of someone's finger with forceps. I was duly impressed. He also brought me a Dermabond practise kit, so I swiped a scalpel to practise with too. He also says I can work on hot dogs instead of the fake flesh. Angel fears my Dermabond practise. Dr. E sent me to see a large woman who was feeling bloated. "Well, what're you going to order?" Did an ultrasound to rule out ascites, CBC and electrolytes because she's on dialysis, and considered a liver panel. And then, suddenly, the nurse tapped me on the shoulder. "Um...lab just called in a panic value for her potassium." Normal range: 3.5-5.5. Her value: 7. Whoops. No wonder she feels funny. So we sent her to be dialysed a day early. Watched a shoulder reduction on an old lady. She was so skinny, I could see the bone pop back into place. *shivers* Saw an 81-year-old man who'd tripped and fallen off of his driveway. Dr H: What, does he drive a monorail? Driveway's elevated about two feet from the grass. Dr. H: So it's a hovercraft... He ate some dirt, wound up with the biggest hematoma (blood-blister/bruise) under his eye. And there I am, trying to do a neuro evaluation, and he's had a stroke on that side. So his pupil always looks funny, and his vision's always blurrier, and he has decreased sensation, and I just gave up. CT'd his head, did a chest X-ray and an EKG and a UA. All normal. Microscopic analysis of the UA revealed sperm present. Dr. H: Good for him! So we sent him home with ice and Tylenol. Little boy with a headache and fever and a sore throat. A little bit of RUQ tenderness. Dr. H spent several minutes prompting me, but I was stuck on "do a strep screen" and couldn't get anything else. Apparently, anyone can get mono. Even little kids, although it's rare under the age of two. That's what he was looking for. Insert me blushing. Oh, and : Little kids don't have frontal sinuses until between the ages of 3 and 7, older according to some people, so watch out for a sinusitis diagnosis in a baby :) Lots of questions about what meds I'd prescribe. Almost none of them did I give a satisfactory answer, but he was patient with me. I got explanations for why I was wrong, at least. Saw a truck driver with chronic back pain from Georgia and thought about my Lily, briefly. Extra-strength tylenol and Skelaxin so she can keep on truckin' :) Then, near the end of the evening, came the 13-year-old boy with strange neurological symptoms and a headache off and on all day. Dr. H ordered a West Nile panel, did a head CT and a lumbar puncture (spinal tap, for the uninitiated). So I got a procedure signed off today, since I only have to watch them, not do one this year. All negative, West Nile will take 72 hours to get done. Had bigeminal non-perfusing PVC's explained to me as S came in on a cart with a pretty cool-looking EKG strip (p-wave, QRS complex, wide QRS complex with no associated arterial pulsation, p-wave, QRS, wide QRS with no associated arterial pulsation, etc.), and a whole list of meds. Been complaining of a dry mouth. He's using a nebulizer 3-4 times a day, and Dr. H said "Are you using the ipratropium bromide every time?" Why, yes, why? Use it every other time, he says. It'll give him a dry mouth. Now why didn't the family doctor think of that? Nobody ever told them. Left at 10:20 to discover that the Pepsi previously serving as emergency refreshment in my bag had been punctured and leaked everywhere. I hope the lab will take a half-drenched-in-Pepsi order for drawing my blood. Wore my scrubs home, since my clothes were suspiciously damp feeling. Stopped at Wal-mart and bought corn, DVD's, a heating pad, some anti-shoe-stink-powder, and Monistat for that horrid itchyness that's been driving me nuts. There, now you know what sort of strange things I buy at Wal-mart in the middle of the night on my way home. Got some odd looks for the scrubs. Kudos to for making it through her first day of NICU, which is a wicked hard place to start. Even more kudos to the nurses and doctors she worked with there for making it a hopeful place. Back in for the last day at 0800, it's bedtime now.

Random rantings.

Saw the man with the human bite last night. His finger's going to have to come off. Whoops. Haven't been to Curves since last Friday. Won't be today, but tomorrow after shift I can go, and then haul my butt out of bed to go every subsquent day. If I go five times in one week, does that make up for not going in the previous? I go to Indy on Monday, for nine days. So it begins...I need to find the Curves in Indy, and I need to figure out how to get the signal from the wireless router to survive going through two exterior and three interior walls - at least, IIRC, it's the straight-line distance that counts. I suppose that means we'll need a signal booster? If anyone has a suggestion that's cheaper (I can't move the source router or run cable, so don't suggest it) dLink has a signal extender that has mostly positive reviews. I read them all, and the biggest complaint of the people who gave it negative reviews was that it didn't work with their non-dLink WAP/routers. When I clicked to get the product information page, I read the information. I saw: 1) "In repeating mode, repeats the wireless signal of D-Link AirPlus access points and routers. Other access points and routers supported with future firmware upgrades." 2) A link to a "Compatibility Chart" that lists the model numbers it's compatible with. This falls under common-sense shopping in my mind. Know what you're buying and what it does. I don't believe that—even though it's "proprietary software" that does the repeating and hence makes the connection brand-specific—that not being universally compatible is cause for a 1/5 stars review. Read the information, Dear Customer. I kid you not: "(1/5) Limited Use, May 8, 2003 Reviewer: An electronics fan from Gainesville, FL United States This product as a repeater is made to work only with other D-Link products. If you have one of D-Links useable routers, this repeater might work." This is not a useful review, nor does it give me any information about the product when used in the way it was designed to be used. "(2/5) Contrary to the title, this is not an ethernet wireless bridge: don't buy if it you want to add wireless networking to an "ethernet port e.g. an Xbox or Playstation. This device is something different. In fact, it's two somethings: firstly, it can be configured to be a basic access point (no firewall or routing facilities). Hook it up to your cable modem or DSL box, and have wireless access to a single computer elsewhere in your house. To be honest, there are many more powerful access point devices out there for similar $$. Alternatively, if you have one of the very limited number of supported D-Link wireless access points, this box will act as a "repeater": it will accept the signal and rebroadcast it, extending the range. If that's what you need, then lucky for you and five stars for the device! " I don't know about you, sir, but my title says "Wireless Range Extender". And you went on to say that when asking it to perform its advertised function, you would give it five stars. What the hell? Peds tells me that I have to be in Indy at the beginning of August, earlier than I told S's. So their daughter is coming the week I'll be there, so they need the bedroom. I'm not offended. I'm annoyed with the peds people. Have started looking for another place to stay. It's just a week, I'm quiet and cute and I have my own laptop and wireless point, so I don't take up much room or bandwidth. Plus, I don't know how much I'll even be there. In any case, if I want to shower before I go to work (Dr. H is on from 3:30-11:30, so he'll be there most of my shift, yay!), I need to shower now.

Epilogue...

Home from the ER, and as I lay me down to sleep, I have a few things to mention from tonight. It wasn't busy, nor was it overly interesting. Chest and abdominal pain. Dr. H compared me favourably to a first-year resident. Iwona and I both, he said. Taking twenty-five aspirin will probably not kill you, but it will make you miserable. I hope SJBH will be helpful to you. Drinking ten to twelve beers a day, every day is a drinking problem. Congratulations to you, sir, for admitting that, and an ovation for saying you need help. Again, I hope SJBH will be able to help you. "Three medium to large drinks" does not give you a BAC of 0.250 two hours after you came into the ER. I hope you have the courage to admit to your problem some day. If you ride with your feet on the dashboard of an SUV, be ready for some nasty leg pain when the airbag goes off. When your husband-to-be tells you that if the 350-lb scuba tank starts to fall, get out of the way, listen to him. Then we won't have to give you enough morphine to knock out a horse just so the orthopod can put your wrist back together. The organ harvest has been done on the little boy. His father arrived in time. Lungs and heart were unusable, but his kidneys and liver will go to help keep some other child alive. Paramedics never saw a car seat, but mother swears he was in one, and since the semi hit about where he was sitting... Thank you for listening - thank you for caring. Good night, O Best Beloved.

Well, that's encouraging...

Stopped by campus to check my mailbox, since it's on the way from French Lick and I knew our Family Practise exam results were going to be in. Raw score: 71. Mean is 74.1, high of 81, low of 66. I'm pretty sure that a passing score in FP was either 60 or 70%, and I know it wasn't any higher than that, so I'm content to have passed. Good enough, although I wanted to at least make the mean. Maybe I should've studied more. Would it have helped? Part of me is screaming and sobbing that I should stop being so bloody content with mediocrity. But the rest of me shrugs its shoulders. I just don't want to sacrifice my life to get high scores. Also in: my OSCE results. There I'm in no danger. Only one score below the mean, with a z-score of -0.53 (Someone with recent stats want to remind me how z-scores are calculated?), that being the one where I know I got some of the post-encounter questions wrong; the rest above the mean, z-scores between +0.08 and +1.27. Final overall score: +0.43. That's good enough for me - I'm beating the mean there. Ad in my box for a new kind of penlight, wondering what it's all about, and whether any penlight is worth $30. Also a book on Managing Contraception, someone must've given it to one of the groups I'm a member of. And finally, and most wonderfully, I have the P-notes for fall loans. I love fall loans. So it was a worthwhile endeavour to stop here at campus, even if I was completely bewildered by the free parking on Sundays. (At least I think that if you can't get a ticket, and the gate is up, you get in free...) Evening shift tonight, overnight from 7 to 3 or 8 to 4, depending on when I go. Afternoon shift from 3-11 tomorrow, and then 8-4 on Tuesday, and that ends my FP rotation. I start next Monday the 4th of August in Indy, and will apparently be down there until the 13th, when I come back for two weeks in Fort Wayne. Things are starting to get weird RP group:I will attempt to work out RP issues, and I do plan on getting you all through the campaign by the time my schedule becomes impossible. We may have some late or skipped weekends, depending on what I have to do. Business completed here, I am on my way to get lunch, then back to Fort Wayne and the dysfunctional cablemodem. I'll see you when I see you, all. Whenever the damn thing works.

Once upon a midnight dreary...

Killed the afternoon playing Morrowind and relaxing. Dressed up all pretty and went to the banquet. Spent my reception time talking to the president of the IAFP from this last year, spent my banquet time talking to the residents from St. Francis, and being probably more honest than I should've been. They were nice about it, though. Came back and Arcana was down, so I sent Angel home to fix the connection. Part of me wonders if this isn't the suck-ass new cable modem we got when the last one got devoured by the lightning strike. It's slow as everloving fuck right now, and I know it's not my end, because all my other MOOs are working fine. It's 12 AM. I think I should probably go to bed, but I'm not all that tired yet. Perhaps packing is in order, so I can come back to the room, pick up my bags, and head out after the directors' meeting tomorrow. I asked a bellhop today how much one should tip. He said, he looks at it as whatever you can afford, but that he thought it was very thoughtful of me to ask. I wish I knew how it all worked, but I don't know what order things happen in. Do I pull my car up, then get the bellhop, then check out? Do I check out, then get the bellhop? I think I'll just bloody carry my own bags. I'm a big girl. It'll only be two trips, even with all the convention loot. 12:54 AM: Am now packed, about 99% of the way. Cable modem seems to be varying its bandwidth between tiny and 0, and Angel called to say he was going to bed. So I think I will follow him, curl up with my Grumpy Bear in my bed full of rained-down sparkles from my dress tonight, and wake up bright and early to go to the directors' meeting and Take Notes. I have to e-mail Andy and Mandy about what's going on. So goodnight, O Best Beloved, and sweet dreams be yours.

Never let it be said...

...that I found a hotel room with a showerhead whose lowest-velocity function was a nicely powered pulse, and failed to take advantage of this fact when I've not seen Angel in days. I feel about a million times better.

Whee, giant fighting monsters!

Whisper is a Colossal Bee that can Phase in and out of Existence and Leap Great Distances, is Radioactive, and has Huge, Sharp Claws. Strength: 10 Agility: 7 Intelligence: 7 To see if your Giant Battle Monster can defeat Whisper, enter your name and choose an attack: fights Whisper using Strength Agility Intelligence

Buahaha! I have a giant bee that's beaten both and !

Long live the Internet, indeed.

Try the word Quiz! I'm almost ashamed to admit that I missed one. :( This morning sometime I turned my DNS back to automatic, like I thought I had after spending twenty minutes on the phone with a support tech yesterday. Part of that was giving myself a static IP to see if I could even be seen on their system. No seeing. Turned the DNS to automatic and then suddenly, without any warning, I had an IP address. Opened IE. No page. Damndamndamn. Flash of inspiration: I went to the gateway by IP address and got a page that told me my authenticating server was down, and I could go ahead and use the Internet. A few moments later, I got the authenticating server. So now, on the last day, I have 'net access finally. Yesterday, O Best Beloved, I did make it up for breakfast with the Residents, and had rather a nice time, all things considered. Heard about how nice St. Francis was. Met the fourth student who was here, and determined that she didn't want to be a delegate, so we had a little chat after breakfast and then stopped by the registration booth. Now I have two ribbons to wear on my nametag: a blue one with white letters that says STUDENT and a purple one with gold letters that says DIRECTOR, and I'm the director of the 14th district for the next year, because Mandy can only serve one term and I'm older than Andy is. So Andy's the alternate director, and I'm the director, and Mandy's a delegate, and we went and got all the ribbons, yay! Then after breakfast, since it was too late to go hear Dr. Feldman who sponsored our breakfast speak after all the beribboning and all, I went to the exhibit hall. And I walked around until I had been to all of the booths and collected everything that the drug reps had to throw at me. And I carried my four bags of stuff back to the room, and I sorted it all. I have a lot of nice pens, including some from Clarian down in Indy that light up when you play with them. I have a whole box of cheap pens. I have coffee mugs, three or four, I think, and a clock, and some squeezy-thingies, and a laser pointer and a Sanford Guide of my Very Own, and I had an all-around good time. And then I came back to the room and I exhausted another tech support person about the silly Internet not working, which is when I got the static IP and never switched my DNS back, I think, before going to lunch. Lunch was on dyslipidemia and how awful it is to have bad cholesterol and how much worse it is to also have diabetes. And all the drugs that people should be on. And I need to get my fasting glucose and my lipids checked. Hmm. But some doctors sat at the table with Andy and I, so it went all right. Then I went back and I slept for two hours, rather than going out to listen to the doctors tell stories. I should've listened to the stories, but I was so tired. Went to congress, stood up and announced our official positions, and voted on all the issues. Went back to the room and played Morrowind for an hour before putting a brick on the sneak key and going to the All-Member Party, which involved a whole bunch of inflatable games, some pretty darn good music from a live band, and a buffet line. Got to meet Mandy's baby and husband (in that order) and take home with me a fiber-optic flashlight like the kind I used to get at the circus. And I threw kids at an inflatable velcro wall for a while, because apparently they didn't really need the students to work at all. They just wanted us to come. And then I went back, put on my suit, and alternated between splashing around in the twin pools and soaking in the hot tub for a while. It's been a long time since I've gotten to do that. Left when the hot tub got full of late-teens/early-twenties who all seemed to know each other, came back to the room, talked to Angel, played a little more Morrowind, and went to bed. Got up late this morning - I've missed two of the lectures I thought about going to, but I decided somewhere along the line that I really needed the chance to catch up my sleep - got dressed, and am now about to head out to see a lecture on Perinatal Implications of Modern Infertility to make sure I at least saw one lecture at this entire conference. I'm such a bum. It's not that I don't want to learn, it's more that I just want a chance to relax for a bit, and this is (despite the agonising loneliness of missing Angel) really a good place to just relax, sleep, and let my mind drift. I feel good, O Best Beloved, at peace with the things I've seen in the preceding week. I feel eerily like I'm in Morrowind, where you have to sleep and rest and reflect on what you've learned in order to level. Perhaps, now, I am a level two or three Medical Student? In any case, I'm going to head to lecture now, then to a Memorial Luncheon, then toy with going to see Willy Wonka in the afternoon. Or I might come back here and look for Angel, who of course is absent when I finally get access.

The Internet is broken. Long live the Internet.

I woke up this morning with a terrible headache in my right temple. So I did what I should do, for once - I popped a Benadryl and an Aleve and I went back to bed. This, O Best Beloved, is what I must always do when I have a headache. For twenty minutes (two cycles of the clock) I lay there with a blistering headache, and then I felt it ease, and shortly thereafter I fell sound asleep. I was awakened most pleasantly by Angel crawling onto the bed and kissing me as he left for work, and blearily asked him to set the alarm. When it woke me up, I had second thoughts about going to French Lick, as it was then 30 minutes before my self-appointed time to leave home and I hadn't packed a single bloody thing. Furthermore, I still didn't know what "Resort Casual" meant. Deciding (based on some earlier-gotten advice) that it meant "Business Casual with Shorts" and knowing that I had no shorts, I settled on packing my three pairs of pants and my five shirts, figuring that would do somehow. One of the pairs of pants was wrinkled, and the shirts were not all immediately available. Panic ensued, the details of which I will spare you, O Best Beloved. Let us just say I got over it, and packed. I had my sparkly dress for the eveningwear portion of our weekend, and I remembered two pairs of hose this time, and my Lily's shoes, which I am lucky to still have. I don't remember anything yet that I forgot, and that's a good thing. Got in the car about 11 or 11:30, and headed out to French Lick. Stopped at McDonald's for lunch, resolved to learn how not to be hungry ever again. So much greeeease. Despite calling Angel in a panic as I realised 37 had construction and was diverting travellers to 67, that my atlas was in the back, and that going 70 miles an hour down the highway was not a good time to look at a map and figure out where the hell 67 went and where I should expect to regain my original travel itinerary (There were signs), I arrived in French Lick in good time, at 3:55 by my analog watch that I'm wearing because I lost the digtital one again. Parked in the 15-minute parking, and went to the registration desk. Sadly, I do not have a purple ribbon on my nametag that says "STUDENT" in pretty gold letters. Nor do I have my year in school on my nametag. I'm an outcast with a guest's nametag. But I did get a room in the corner of the hotel, with a beautiful view out the windows, and I carried my bags in all by myself, sneaking past the bellhops with their carts, because I know you should tip them and I don't know how much, and they scare me, O Best Beloved. Then I parked the car properly and I called Angel and I looked around the hotel and started meeting people like a Good Student. And then after a bit I went up to the room to pursue the possibility of Internet Access. There is a tiny modem here, that in theory I should be able to plug my computer in and for the low low price of $9.95 a day have high-speed access. Unfortunately, when I plug my computer in all I get is nothing. So I took a nap. Woke up and went to the Pre-caucus Dinnerthingy, where I was seated with the 14th district, which is the one Just For Medical Students, and I met Mandy and Andy, who are also Medical Students like me. And we discovered that we were supposed to have three delegates to the Congress for our district. Which made us the delegates. So after dinner, in which we met a Resident who invited us to breakfast at 7:00 at the Bistro, we went to the congress and sat and listened. And then I was going to go back to my room or up to the Presidential Suite's Afterglow party (free food and drinks), but I started talking to Dr. Haste, and he walked with me over toward the Reference Committees before I knew it, and asked me which I was going to. Well, then I had to go to the Reference Committee, so I went to the one on pitocin and term limits and residents (three different topics!). It turned out to be far more interesting than I had thought, O Best Beloved, because the case that was presented involved an Amish midwife practising midwifery on Amish patients. Which, in the State of Indiana, is technically against the law, because only licensed nurse-midwives can practise midwifery. Otherwise, you're an Unlicensed Person practising Medicine. But usually they just look the other way, because it's really an Amish thing, and the midwives are v. good. She had a good relationship with Dr. Y, over many years - and apparently, even that relationship could've gotten Dr. Y in trouble, for assisting someone to Unlawfully Practise Medicine, so I suppose what Dr. Y should've done by law is to tell the midwife's patients that she couldn't see them if they were seeing an unlawful practicioner, which puts everyone at risk of dying and... Anyway, Dr. Y gave the midwife some pitocin in case of haemorrhage post-partum. This is a safe drug, in knowledgeable hands, and it can save lives, by reducing the haemorrhage to levels that allow the patient to reach the ER before she's lost 6 units of blood. And the midwife was talked into assisting at a home-birth of a non-Amish patient, and bad things happened, and the patient bled, and the midwife gave the pitocin, and the wrong person found out, and the next thing she knew, Dr. Y was being brought before the medical board to have her license possibly suspended. It was a mess, and the doctors who deal with the Amish want to know what they can do to help do what's right for their patients without losing the ability to practise medicine. Which is a touchy issue, and D. I want to throw some things at you sometime. We were trying to figure out if there was a loophole we could get through since the Amish midwives don't charge for their services. I got involved in the discussion after the reference committee broke up, because I wanted to hear what the doctors had to say about the whole mess, and that's when I met a doctor from Connersville who talked to me and walked me to the Presidential Suite, made sure I had met someone else before he went to hobnob - someone who knew Angel's parents, so we talked about Rushville and whether or not I want to do OB with my practise. And when I was done talking to him, I met up with the medical director or some such at St. V's and listened to his travel stories and looked at the digital pictures he had on his laptop and drank wine. And I'm supposed to look him up if I'm ever at St. V's, so he can take me to lunch. Dr. Z. Really nice guy. And then, finally, O Best Beloved, I returned to my room and saw I had voice mail. It was more residents from the same group, asking me to breakfast in the morning, so I suppose I should go. And then I fiddled with the Internet some more, and got nowhere, so I called tech support and talked to him. And it ended up that he escalated my incident, and told me to keep trying off and on, hopefully someone would fix it, since they didn't know if they would be able to call me back at my room. Which in the end is probably good, because now that I'm at the end of my journal entry I'll go to bed and get up to go to breakfast in the morning.

And now for something completely different:

Kansas really is: flatter than a pancake. I laughed for five minutes... Also in offbeat news: Operation: Hidden Agenda, a deck of playing cards to oppose the Iraqi 52 most wanted. Oil from garbage? They claim it'll work. Maybe they can make oil from leftover medical texts next :P And barking police officers. I think it sounds like a good idea. And a new hobby for my Lily... And one for me, if this whole Med School thing doesn't pan out. Talk to me. Something a little different, something maybe that won't make you or me cry. We need to laugh, too, you and I, O Best Beloved...

I need a vacation...

Today, O Best Beloved, ended with a code. A coda, if you will indulge me the black-humour wordplay, to last night's grief. I don't know his name, his age, or his address - they had the information in the computer but I didn't hear them or spend the time to take a sticker from the chart. A gentleman in his 60's, by the medic's guess, found unconscious and in cardiac arrest. He'd been down for a little time at least, but less than an hour. He came in in v-fib (when your heart is just sort of randomly squeezing without purpose) and they shocked him, and started lines, and did CPR, and for a few brief moments he had a heartbeat, but then it went away again. V-fib/V-tach/Asystole. Again and again and again. And finally Dr. K looked up at the screen of the heart monitor, and the heart doctor looked down at the person doing the airway bagging, and Dr. K said "Stop CPR" and the heart doctor said "Stop bagging." And everyone looked down at the man on the cart, one arm hanging loose off of the edge where it had fallen during one of the jolts, and Dr. K said "Call it?" and the heart doctor said "Call it." And I looked over at the chaplain and I nodded, and she mouthed "Code?" and I nodded again. They drew the curtains and they disconnected the machines and I left to tell Iwona that it was the end of my shift. She shooed me out of there. I went back to the trauma rooms, and I stepped inside the drawn curtains and looked down at the body. Not ten minutes had passed, but his face was grey and sunken, his eyes half-slits, still moist for now. Was-a-man, is-a-body, such a subtle change. They'd gotten hold of his relatives and the chaplain went to see them. I didn't. I stared down at him for a few more minutes, what was left of him, so different from the little boy of last night's drama and yet the same... Someone said: Is this your first code? I said no, last night was. Someone else said: That wasn't the same, it was something strange. And it was, last night, strange and surreal. I found out some more things: There was a carseat. I don't know how he got dislodged from it. That takes away some of the fury. They did an EEG and found, as we predicted, no brainwave activity. They have him on basic supportive measures - a ventilator, fluids to keep his empty body going until his father arrives from Arkansas. His mother's already decided that whatever organs aren't too hypoxic to donate will be harvested and donated. That takes away some of the pain. They're still there, the fury and the agony and the indelible memory of his face, his half-slitted eyes (why do they open like that?), his heaving chest as the machinery of life struggled to keep functioning without purpose or guidance. But they're eased a bit, and with time, that bright broken innocent part of me will heal and cease to bleed. But I hope and I pray, O Best Beloved, that there will never come a time when I can look upon death without that breaking and wounding. I believe as firmly as you do, you who listen to my tales in the dark and lonely hours of the night, that I will never lose hope, never lose compassion, never cease to be stirred by all that is pain and injury in this world of ours. It is that which fuels me, which gives me the burning, driving need to heal where I can heal, comfort where I can comfort, and to leave some tiny footprint in the lives I touch, some tiny change for the better. Things happened today, O Best Beloved, things that I wanted to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about the boy and his bicycle, when I stopped by the road and waited for the paramedics to come, and then saw them again in the ER later on. I wanted to tell you about the woman who accidentally took a pill that bought her a ticket to an overnight stay. I wanted to tell you about C, the PA student, and how we got to look over things together for a while and I felt that connection of camaraderie. But I think most of all I wanted to tell you about the man who died, and the boy from last night, and I wanted to tell you that the second time I've seen death it still hurt, still twisted, still bled inside me...but that sometimes it's easier to face and easier to understand than others. I walked out of the ER today without a smile on my face, but by the time I got to the car, I had placed the memory of his face in a part of my mind that sprung into being last night, a place to keep the things I must learn - if not to love - to accept the inevitability of. We live. We are hurt. We die, all of us, in the end. I wish and I don't wish that knowing that made it hurt less.

To every [thing there is] a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every [thing] beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that [there is] no good in them, but for [a man] to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it [is] the gift of God. I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth [it], that [men] should fear before him. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, [that] wickedness [was] there; and the place of righteousness, [that] iniquity [was] there. I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for [there is] a time there for every purpose and for every work. I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all [is] vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Wherefore I perceive that [there is] nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that [is] his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

Ecclesiastes 3 (KJV) Over the next few days I'll be at a family practise conference in French Lick. I may or may not have Internet access. What I will have, however, is some time to absorb and consider the events of the last few days; time I desperately need. Bear with me, O Best Beloved, and I'm sure in time I'll have for you the bright tales and patient stories that have previously been my lot. Bear and learn, if you will.

Requisat in Pacem, M.

Tonight, O Best Beloved, I saw murder done. Murder without malice, without intention, without reason or purpose. Murder by omission. Murder of a little boy who should have survived. I can't decide how I feel - I'm torn between impotent fury and ravening grief, and something or somethings unnameable. It was one of those nights in the ER - not too busy, quite a few things I was going to tell you about, O Best Beloved, interesting things I saw. They all went flying out of my mind the moment the call came in. "We've got the [helicopter] coming in, paediatrics trauma." Nobody knew any more than the paramedics had radioed in - that we had, incoming, a two-year-old boy who had been ejected 30 feet from a car, that his heart rate was 90 (too low) and his blood pressure 90/60 (also too low), and that they would be there in 13 minutes. So we pulled together the peds trauma team, and we sent the onsite EMT's to meet the helicopter, and they brought him in, bagged and on oxygen, and we saw some neurological responses, coughing and a little bit of a gag reflex, and I stood as far out of the way as I could as they assessed him, transferred him off the EMS cart, and got permission from the peds neurosurgeon to take him straight to the CT scanner. I stayed in the ER while they went to CT. When they came back, the chaplain came in with them. His ventilator bag was gone, and half the monitors were quiet. And I stood in the room, staring at the tiny pale face with the mussed dark brown hair, and I listened to the chaplain read him last rites, and I didn't know what had happened but I couldn't ask until later. Later came, and Dr. S showed me the CT scan. Where there would normally be nice grey and white matter, sulci and gyri and all the landmarks I'm used to seeing, there was nothing but a flat and featureless grey haze, punctuated by tiny bright white pinpoints of blood and draped with the unmistakable light space of a subarachnoid haemorrhage. They call it diffuse axonal injury, and it's what happens when the brain dies from lack of oxygen. And it's permanent. They pronounced him dead in the CT scanner. When he came back to the trauma room, he still had brainstem functioning - he was breathing on his own, he had pulses - but you could see his oxygen saturation dropping and his blood pressure falling. It was 72/40 when I left the room for the last time, and even though they'd started running oxygen again and using a bag to get it in, his oxygen saturation was well into the 60% range. And the plan was to continue supportive care - an IV drip of saline, a bag or a respirator - and nothing else. There's nothing else to do. They took him to the paediatric ICU to wait until his mother got there. His mother was taken by ambulance to a closer, local hospital. Also two other children - 2 months and 5 years. All of them were restrained in the car. Buckled in. All of them were checked and released with only minor injuries. That's why I can name it murder by omission, O Best Beloved. If he had been in a carseat with the harness fastened when someone rearended their car, there's no reason to doubt that he would have had the same lucky fate as his family. B. said to me, "was he restrained?" I told him no. B. said "They should hang parents for that." Dr. W turned away from his computer and said, very softly, "They've already had their punishment." I don't know what that mother will think or do or say when she arrives at the hospital; my shift ended at 10:30 and I got to go home, walk out of the hallways where the curtain is still drawn around the double room that serves us as a trauma room, where there are still packets and wrappers at the edges, where they were just finally as I left removing the single crosswise bed with its tiny wooden backboard. I got to go home. I got to leave, and I can still hear his choking breaths, see the tiny chest with its tiny tubes and wires and stickers and all the things that couldn't preserve a life that had already fled. How much more agony must it be for the mother who has to ride an hour and a half with her still-living son to say farewell to a dead one? How much pain can one person bear? Tonight, O Best Beloved, I was baptised by fire into the reality of death and the paradoxicality of it. I have never seen a person die; I saw a little boy, face marred only by the tubes in his mouth and nose, with skin somehow nearly undamaged despite a thirty-foot flight, despite being found face-up in a field, a boy whose body was nothing more than an empty, hollow, broken shell holding a heart and lungs and kidneys that would never grow again. I saw a tiny pair of tennis shoes in a bag, the only clothing the medics brought in. And I listened to the last rites and I cried inside, and something bright and innocent and vulnerable in me broke apart and bled like he did not. And then I bit back my tears and I swallowed the lump in my throat and I walked out of that brightly-lit room feeling older, somehow, and I wondered if it showed in my eyes or my face. I went back to the doctors' station, then, and I went to the chart rack and I picked up a chart, and I looked at it, and I turned to Dr. S, and I said "All the labs are fine, and the CT looks good." And he said "She can go home, then. Why don't you go let her know?" And I walked into the room of a 50-year-old woman who'd just come off of a two-week drinking binge, and I smiled.