Winter, pt II

Dear New England,
It's winter. Less rain, more snow. Seriously. I love rain and all, but it's winter.

Also it smells like corn dogs in here. What's the deal with that?

Winter

So between about 10pm last night and 1pm today, we managed to get at least a foot of snow. I didn't measure it because I was too busy cursing as it came up to my knees when I walked out to meet Cathy today. We live in a city that has epic plows of doom. They circulate not infrequently and clear our streets so that they are passable. However, the snow that they move has to go somewhere, generally along the periphery of the street. This means that it gets pushed into driveways. Yup, we had a veritable 2.5 foot tall jersey barrier of snow in our driveway today. I spent about 30 minutes hacking away at a portion of it with a snow shovel from Wal*Mart, dutifully piling up hunks of snow and ice on the snow covered lawn. I had triumphantly (pathetically?) cleared about a quarter of the entire thing when our neighbor with the industrial strength snow blower showed up to clear the entire jersey barrier and our driveway in 25 minutes. I am torn between feeling depressed by the futility of my actions and impressed by the relative ease that the snow blower did its job. Either way, I think I owe that man a good bottle of wine or cookies.

New Year's Ramblings

So I won't lie. The Haiti thing is really getting to me. I mean, it's just so completely ridiculous. Haiti was already one of the most unstable, impoverished nations in the world and now they have to deal with the fact that most, if not all, of their infrastructure is destroyed.

That and I saw Sanjay Gupta treating a 15 day old infant with a skull laceration yesterday. On CNN. I started to cry, at the gym, while running on the treadmill. I then gave all of the money in my wallet to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but it might be a good idea to avoid growing up for the foreseeable future.

I'm learning to read EKGs. It's essentially like trying to comprehend the scribbles of your best friend's child; they mean something to them, but to you, they're gibberish. It's one of those skills, however, that I think every doctor should have, even if all they can do is think, "huh, this is not good. I better call a cardiologist/the ER."