Category: Uncategorized

So…. had the sort of afternoon where I found myself really appreciating my own life. Lotsa other people have it far, far worse than I! Also had one of those “what are the chances of that” kind of day – two patients in a row whose problems turned out to be unintended pregnancy, both people whose health wouldn’t make a pregnancy easy, and whose life situations won’t make a pregnancy (or a child) at all easy to deal with. Sigh. My heart went out to both. Makes me think of friends who have tons to offer a child, and aren’t able to have one – life’s not fair, sometimes.

Also lost (part of) my keys today. Not sure how. Must’ve had them when I left the house because I did lock the door. But then a few hours later after three meetings in three different locations, realized my keychain felt too light and realized I still had carkey, cell phone, and the key to Keith’s car, but no other keys. On what appeared to be an intact keyring. No luck with retracing my steps. Odd, must be one of those quantum things?

Demo’d a new form I’d revised for our clinic in the faculty meeting this AM. Revisions based on a set of comments I’d gathered from the group about a month ago. My change addressed every one of those comments, which was nice. The main result in the meeting? A whole new set of even more ambitious requests. How will I get the computer to give them foot massages while they fill out this form, anyway? Main result after the meeting was over: over half of the faculty found the chance to approach me privately and thank me effusively for the changes I made. That felt good.

Now if I can get someone to hire me to do this for a living…

Thinking on my drive home about the need to get a job – it’s come up twice today that my funding runs out in a few months. Not even sure how to go about it; I haven’t ever really looked for a job before. But it seems a little foolhardy to sit around hoping someone will drop an opp in my lap (just because it always worked before…) so I suppose I should start… um… looking at stuff like people do when they look for jobs.

Heck, I don’t even know where WE advertise when we have a position. Other than those ads in the back of journals, I mean, which always seems a little like the ads in the back of Rolling Stone magazine where anything might go…

Maybe I’ll try a little networking and see if someone wants to save me the trouble of actually looking for work. Sigh. I should think about stuff like this when I haven’t actually seen patients until 8 PM, and have a bit more energy.

Also realized that I’ll see my parents and brother in just over a week, so it’s probably time to go buy them Christmas presents. Inspiration, I need you!

Sigh.

I was going to present this spiffy new tool to my colleagues Friday AM. Part of the fun would be saying “and this is finished, so you can have it RIGHT NOW instead of waiting six months like you usually have to.”

Then I had this … inspiration. The tool could be so much better than I’d made it. The version I’d made was clearly a big improvement on what we had before, but it could be better still… with some major re-programming.

So I’ve spent the week programming madly and cussing over the fact that it’s not going fast enough for me to be able to present the finished product to the group in two days. Sigh. I’ll have something to show them, just not enough…

Hopefully I don’t fall prey to this “never-finished” syndrome where I keep thinking of ways it could get better, and hence never actually put anything out into action.

I just interviewed a young lady who’s applying for college. It’s always a challenge for me to assess how mature and competent these kids are “supposed” to be. My memory of my own college interview amazes me – I asked a variety of idiotic questions that utterly assumed I’d be accepted. I’m surprised they didn’t reject me just based on that.

The interview form asks if the kids have any significant barriers to achievement in their lives. This is intended to reflect things like physical handicaps, financial hardship, etc. But sometimes I’m tempted to say “this child has a significant barrier to development in that she has had an utterly wonderful, sheltered life in which she’s never wanted for anything. She can’t possibly have developed any coping skills because she’s never had to cope with anything!”

How do you raise your kids to feel secure and loved and yet give them the drive to develop competence?

I started yesterday with a migraine. A totally undeserved headache since I spent the eve before in quiet social time with friends, no alcohol or decadance; I was in bed (but not sleeping ;> ) by midnight. So of all the headaches in the city, mine was the least deserved…

So I’ve decided today is the first day of the New Year. So there!

it’s obvious why the wizarding world is so small, when you read fanfiction; the vast majority of wizards appear to be gay…

Made it through an afternoon of craziness. Only one person hospitalized 😦 zero would have been better.

Amazing how nice people really can be (about irritations like waiting a long time) once they realize things are inconvenient for them because someone else is having it really bad.

Well, the Carthage, Missouri plant that has the first functional plant to turn turkey garbage into oil has been shut down temporarily, because the plant was emitting smells so horrible that a town that was positioned next to a turkey farm couldn’t stand them! Since the smell of turkey farms is one of the foulest I’ve encountered, this must be truly awful. As a resident of a town with lots of local refineries, I know no one’s truly successful at wholly restraining bad odors in the oil business. I hope they’re able to fix this; TDP is one of the most promising technologies I’ve seen in a long time. Not only does it produce oil at a cost less than current global oil prices, but it does it from renewable resources that otherwise would be a major source of disease. Even if the plants still stink, I think it would be worth finding remote places to build them – would increase production costs if you have to ship the garbage in, but at least you’d still be getting oil from a renewable source.

My schedule today looked varied – someone with a rash, another with a sore throat, one with back pain, one with chest pain, one with fever, etc. Turns out they ALL had the same thing… a nasty virus that hits the sinuses, throat, stomach, intestines, and causes an interesting rash. Hope it passes through town quickly!

I’ve had an astonishingly productive morning. Maybe K did me a favor; recently I’m less efficient than I like spending the AM working at home…