Scrappy Blog

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Have been busy, I guess.  Thus haven’t posted in a while.

New job is generally fun.  New coworkers are generally pleasant.  I am actually appreciating the more structured environment rather than working from home all the time.

But last weekend involved a lot of business and gardening and watching my beasties chase butterflies in the yard and a birthday party that happened to be scheduled on Easter (my second-favorite holiday that involves candy and the walking dead), where a dunk tank was played with despite the somewhat chilly weather… K said he was entertained by the wet-teeshirt view and I told him those weren’t my boobs, they were just very large goosebumps….

And Monday I spent the evening trying to chase down some data for work and Tuesday was… I don’t remember… and Wednesday (yesterday) evening some wonderful old college friends were in town so this evening was the first night all week I read LJ.  And I don’t think it’s possible to catch up on my whole flist.  So if I missed something you wanted me to read, could you please point me to it?

K is busy trying to arrange a teleconference involving 4 people:  one here, one in DC, one in Scandinavia, and one in Melbourne. 

What’s new with y’all?

We’re having a classic Texas blue norther – wind roars in and the temperature plummets.  The house is getting chilly so the little grey creature comes up and crawls into the little space between me and the back of my chair.  After a few minutes I come to realize how much warmth can be generated by one small cat…wiggly warmth, to be sure.

Tummy is happy after dinner sandwiches composed of grilled portabella, roasted bell pepper, spicy brown mustard, and gruyere on ciabatta (sp?) bread; I’m contemplating a girl scout cookie and an early bedtime. 

Tomorrow I get to dress up in suit-type clothes and go present the report I wrote last week to the client’s board.  I feel so grown-up…

Fri after work tried out the gym in my new office – fairly deserted, I got in a good workout and cleaned up in time for dinner.  Dinner was with the usual gang, middle eastern food.  Mmmmm, baba ganoush!

Sat AM got my tail out of bed and ran a couple errands – a gift for a birthday party, a tool I needed.  Then over to a friend’s house where we erected about 8 ft of cedar fence in her yard, completed and looking good in time to keep her homeowner’s association from suing her 🙂

Sat afternoon was a friend’s kid’s birthday party – cute kid, lotsa fun adults there, generally nice.  Came home and did some housecleaning until dinnertime, then had italian food at a new place with friends.  Wasn’t so impressed with the restaurant – too much onion in my chicken masala – but the company was good.  Came home and crashed relatively early.

This AM, worked out with trainer, then a big brunch with various people including the always-wonderful nicoleallee and johnbrandon.  I am always in a good mood after hanging out with those two.  Stopped by to see a friend’s newly-purchased house, then home to do some gardening and housework.  The after-dark hours have been spent puttering – catching up on LJ, cleaning off a bit of my desk although there’s a lot left to go.  Playing with cats – Judy is my personal paper-shredder, helping me dispose of already-scanned documents…

Tomorrow I must buy gas on the way to work. 

Huh, reading over that my life sounds boring.  I kind of enjoy it, though!

Missed Christmas… Missed New Year’s… Missed MLK day and Valentines day… but have a standard “holiday letter” assembled in time for President’s day!  If you’d like me to send you a copy snail-mail or electronic – let me know what address to send it to.

Well, two weeks ago our garage door opener went kaput.  Assessment revealed it had shredded an integral gear that was cleverly made of plastic.  The thing was clearly not designed to be repaired (key components riveted instead of screwed, etc), so I figured I’d replace it.  But it was our anniversary weekend so I deferred the job.  And then there were other obligations… and then I got sick… and then this and that… so the opener didn’t get replaced until today.

As often happens, the project ended up being far more complicated than it should have.  Stupid little details like my garage not having quite enough clearance between the top of the garage door and the rafters gave me sticky technical details to contemplate.  The outlet that was perfectly placed for the old opener was positioned exactly where the new opener was supposed to go, so the outlet had to be moved.  My best drill seems to have burned itself out somehow… suddenly started making odd sparks and smoke which seems like a bad sign; I wasn’t even straining it particularly so maybe the replacement battery I recently bought was the culprit?  Or maybe it’s just old… though ironic that I finished up the job with Granddaddy’s old drill which is probably 40+ years old. 

But now I can open and close the garage door smoothly from the little button by the door, and from either clicker unit, and also from the built-in buttons in our cars, which is pretty cool.  (turns out that the car instruction manual didn’t include the essential step for programming the thing, but fortunately google knows all).

In the process I had to haul out a ton of stuff that was stored by the edges of the door… and it made me realize how much I need to declutter the garage. 

And this all leads to an interesting question:  I’m accumulating quite a pile of the sort of stuff that  might be useful to someone someday.  The old garage door opener, for example, will never work as a garage door opener again – but contains a working electric motor, a long length of chain, a pair of laser sensor things… there’s a kid’s science project in there somewhere!  And I hate throwing out useful stuff.  BUT I have sworn to myself that I will not be stockpiling random spare parts until my garage is completely neat and organized again. 

So… anyone want a bunch of “parts”?  I know that if I gave it to a conventional charity like Goodwill, it’d go in the trash. So if no one claims it, I’ll probably try offering it on Craigslist…  free to whoever comes by to pick it up.

Koshka was terrified of storms, so I still have the instinct to check on the cat when the thunder and lightning get bad.  Which it did, a short time ago.

Judy was sequestered under the dresser – I was shocked she could fit.  Her eyes were so big, they alone seemed to take up the whole space.

Gracie – AKA Fearless Cat – well, she was sitting on the windowsill right by the biggest window in the house.  I walked into the room and she looked up at me with her best “Isn’t this EXCITING????” expression.

Sigh.  Fearless cat will require close attention, I think, since she has no self-preservation instinct of her own….

One of my former professors at UT has a tendency to recruit lots of Chinese-speaking graduate students and colleagues – probably a natural inclination since he’s obviously still most comfortable speaking Chinese, himself.

So he’s adopted the habit of making many of his email subjects bilingual – a string of characters, followed by english words. 

Today he sent out something about the research approval process at our local public hospital system.  What did my mental parser make of a string of meaningless characters?  Well, something like:  “%#@!: HCHD approval process” … and I thought “Well, yes, I’ve often thought that myself, but I’m rather surprised to see him posting it as a widely-distributed email subject line!

Snicker.

A Dutch epidemiologic study suggests that healthcare systems benefit when people smoke and are obese – because they die earlier and cost the system less in the long run.

Which is a not unexpected finding but I’m concerned that it will encourage healthcare systems to continue to refuse to pay for treatments to help people stop smoking and lose weight…

So several of the companies I use have changed their online access stuff.  Most frustrating is the 401K account that requires that I call them for a username – but never answers the phone…

Just called the mortgage company, which is one of those companies that does a bajillion different banking and financial services.  I used to have an online ID and password with them; they’ve streamlined their mortgage info pages in with the rest of their banking services pages, and discarded the old mortgage passwords in favor of the (apparently separately established) banking passwords – a problem, if you don’t happen to have a banking account with them.

The customer services rep informed me, in apparent sincerity, that “Oh, you can’t use the online services page unless you have a banking ID with us.”  Asked how I get a banking ID, she said I could only have that if I have a bank account or credit card with them.  I said “So you’re saying that unless I establish a bank account with you, I’m no longer allowed access to my own mortgage statements?”

There was a pause and a thoughtful “um…” and then she said she’d connect me to the department who handled online services.  Those people handled my problem promptly but…  wow.  Would you want a customer service rep who blurts out answers for stuff where she actually has no clue what’s going on?

So I guess the paperwork is signed and ready to go at this point, and it’s safe to share my news.

I have quit my old job, quit practicing altogether, and taken a job as the person in charge of a multi-clinic electronic medical record for a chain of diabetes clinics. 

This has involved no small amount of guilt about leaving the various patients who seem to truly need me.  The predominant negative feeling is guilt, though, not true sadness; I’m pretty seriously tired of the daily hamster-wheel that is clinical practice.  The system is broken, as

points out; burning myself out to work in a broken system simply enables it to limp along longer. 

I keep marking off “last” experiences – the last patient seen, the last night on call, the last chart note completed, the last PA note co-signed, etc.  It feels good.

In my new job, I’ll be customizing a commercial electronic medical record to optimize clinical efficiency, building tools to help doctors make better decisions, developing programs to monitor and report how well the patients are doing, and putting together training programs so the clinical personnel can learn to use all the cool stuff I’m creating.  I’m pretty psyched.

Of course, today I got an email from my old employer asking if I would be interested in a position with them, doing similar work in their IT department.  Never mind that I’ve been trying to explore possibilities in that direction for a couple