If whenever I have a birthday, I get a little bit depressed and pensive, then every New Years I get a little happy and hopeful. I know that it's a little bit contrived, but it's just the way that I feel. So much possibility for the future. My resolutions for 2009 were to write more and to be more honest. To that end, I started this blog. Which I think helped me a little bit to do both. As for this year, I went pretty modest with the goal of drinking more water. What could possibly go wrong with that? Anyways, for my first post of the new year, I get to write about one of my friends with whom I go way back; I'll call him Not Crazy (NC).
Anyways, NC and I met back in my sophomore year of high school. We went to high school together, we went to college together, we shared a ton of misadventures together. December 13th of 2009, NC's parents called the cops on him, he was taken in and got a 5150. As I've previously worked in a psychiatric inpatient facility in California, I was well aware that the 5150 is a 3-day involuntary hold, which can be upgraded to a 5250, the 30-day involuntary hold. I don't know exactly what NC said or did but he got that upgrade too. So lucky him, he got to spend Christmas and New Years in a loony bin. Or so I thought. I got to see him the day after New Years and I found out that he was actually staying at a "clean living" home. He seemed all right. I was out in Los Angeles with My Love (ML) and went to see NC with ML and a couple of other mutual friends. Walking in to visit felt a little like Buckner walking back into Shea. The layout was pure frat house. However, the difference was that instead of kegerators and beer-pong tables, there were all the hallmarks of 12-step programs. Lots of coffee, ashtrays, and friend of Bill W. literature scattered all around. Having regularly attended 12-step meetings in the past, I knew the scene very well. We were told to have a seat in the lounge and that NC would be right out. It took maybe the longest 5 minutes of my life sitting there and waiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the NC that I knew so well, or someone waxing manic, talking a mile-a-minute, or possibly a haldol'ed out shell of a former human being. Luckily, the person who emerged was NC, just like I remembered him. He said that he was actually in the middle of a class and that we should come back in about 20 minutes. We went to the burger stand across from the house, had some snacks and in 20 minutes NC came outside and we sat outside the house catching up.
This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Being on a 30-day involuntary hold, NC wasn't behind any locked doors. He could have just strolled out to the car with us and rolled away it seemed. But for now, he was staying put. If he did AWOL, I'm sure there would have been some consequence for sure, and I really didn't want to find out about it. It was quite a scene, the 5 of us sitting on a beautiful day in Southern California, the least crazy and least addict prone person in the group had somehow become the person who ended up in treatment. Like I said, I don't know the full story and I didn't want to press, but my theory is psychiatric mismanagement. Sometimes the meds that are supposed to make you sane, all they do is just make you crazy.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Birthdays
"Whenever I have a birthday, I think back over the past year, how I've spent my time, what I've accomplished, what regrets I have, how I've tried to make the world a better place, and what exactly I've been doing with my life over the past 365 days, and I think to myself: 'Man, I wish I'd gotten laid more'."
-Unknown
So for some reason or another, it seems that I've been celebrating a lot of birthdays recently. Partly because I do know a lot of people with October birthdays and also partly because one of those birthdays was my own. I was back in San Diego for the night before my birthday, starting off the night with Jelly Bean (JB), some delivery Chinese food, and the Laker game on TV. JB was a dealing with some kind of cold/flu issue and since I was without My Love (ML), I was kind of looking forward to a relaxed kind of birthday celebration.
I used to both love and dread birthdays so much more. Especially that day before, the last 24 hours of being a certain age. They used to make me so anxious and pensive. Strange as it may seem, the older I get, the more it seems like I have the time to do the things I want to do. Maybe it's because there's just so much less pressure to go out and make the most of every day like when you're young. Maybe it's because I've gained a maturity that makes me enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe it's just the calmness that comes with being in love. Whatever the reason, I spent the day before thinking more about all the things for which I was thankful rather than think about all the things for which I had regret. It was nice.
I ended that night and early morning with Vikey McStoner (VM), sitting around and just shooting the breeze like we did so many nights as medical students. And in the midst of it all was of course a great deal of phone calling to and from ML. I was without her for a whole 9 days and while it was nice to be on vacation, it was hard to be away. Of course I write this now with her a few feet away asleep in our bed and when I think of it now it all seems so silly. For a time there though, it really did take a lot of the flavor out of life being so far away. It feels good to be home, which of course is wherever I'm with her.
-Unknown
So for some reason or another, it seems that I've been celebrating a lot of birthdays recently. Partly because I do know a lot of people with October birthdays and also partly because one of those birthdays was my own. I was back in San Diego for the night before my birthday, starting off the night with Jelly Bean (JB), some delivery Chinese food, and the Laker game on TV. JB was a dealing with some kind of cold/flu issue and since I was without My Love (ML), I was kind of looking forward to a relaxed kind of birthday celebration.
I used to both love and dread birthdays so much more. Especially that day before, the last 24 hours of being a certain age. They used to make me so anxious and pensive. Strange as it may seem, the older I get, the more it seems like I have the time to do the things I want to do. Maybe it's because there's just so much less pressure to go out and make the most of every day like when you're young. Maybe it's because I've gained a maturity that makes me enjoy the simple things in life. Maybe it's just the calmness that comes with being in love. Whatever the reason, I spent the day before thinking more about all the things for which I was thankful rather than think about all the things for which I had regret. It was nice.
I ended that night and early morning with Vikey McStoner (VM), sitting around and just shooting the breeze like we did so many nights as medical students. And in the midst of it all was of course a great deal of phone calling to and from ML. I was without her for a whole 9 days and while it was nice to be on vacation, it was hard to be away. Of course I write this now with her a few feet away asleep in our bed and when I think of it now it all seems so silly. For a time there though, it really did take a lot of the flavor out of life being so far away. It feels good to be home, which of course is wherever I'm with her.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Job
Alice tried another question. "What sort of people live about here?"
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: And in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
Each day that goes by, I find such new and interesting ways in which my new residency program is dysfunctional and broken. Of course it all starts with the people who've somehow ended up working there and as I'm well aware, I am one of them. But in this installment, I'll tell you about another coworker who is just one of the most amusing people with whom I've ever shared a job. I'll call her NF for No Filter. I used to think I said random nonsensical things without a hint of self-awareness. NF just takes it to a whole new level. She has a little boy, just over a year old, and just the very mention of his name brings such joy to her eyes. For some reason, almost every day, without fail, she will tell you about his poo. Just today she was telling me about him making poo, how it smells like roses, and how every #2 the kid makes is a precious, precious gift to be held like gold dust with the aroma of morning coffee. Then she went into a ramble about how much she loved cleaning the kid's bits and pieces. Apparently she finds her son's wedding tackle just so adorable and before long she was telling me about how yucky she finds the naughty bits on girls. It's a tirade I've heard before but only from flaming gay men, not so much from thirty-something-year-old mothers. And while I think NF is sort of a nice looking lady, it's hard to imagine how she ever figured out how to get pregnant. She's just the kind of person who wears old-lady sweaters and sensible shoes no matter the context, I imagine her more as the kind of person who would end up with a dozen cats before she ever ended up married and parenting. That being said, I enjoy her company tremendously and in the very near future, I hope to craft more and better stories about the crazy things she says and does.
"In THAT direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: And in THAT direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
Each day that goes by, I find such new and interesting ways in which my new residency program is dysfunctional and broken. Of course it all starts with the people who've somehow ended up working there and as I'm well aware, I am one of them. But in this installment, I'll tell you about another coworker who is just one of the most amusing people with whom I've ever shared a job. I'll call her NF for No Filter. I used to think I said random nonsensical things without a hint of self-awareness. NF just takes it to a whole new level. She has a little boy, just over a year old, and just the very mention of his name brings such joy to her eyes. For some reason, almost every day, without fail, she will tell you about his poo. Just today she was telling me about him making poo, how it smells like roses, and how every #2 the kid makes is a precious, precious gift to be held like gold dust with the aroma of morning coffee. Then she went into a ramble about how much she loved cleaning the kid's bits and pieces. Apparently she finds her son's wedding tackle just so adorable and before long she was telling me about how yucky she finds the naughty bits on girls. It's a tirade I've heard before but only from flaming gay men, not so much from thirty-something-year-old mothers. And while I think NF is sort of a nice looking lady, it's hard to imagine how she ever figured out how to get pregnant. She's just the kind of person who wears old-lady sweaters and sensible shoes no matter the context, I imagine her more as the kind of person who would end up with a dozen cats before she ever ended up married and parenting. That being said, I enjoy her company tremendously and in the very near future, I hope to craft more and better stories about the crazy things she says and does.
Too Long
It's been a strange 10 weeks or so since I've updated this blog. As I've known people to disappear before in the way that I've done so recently, I've learned that the reason is usually one of three things: drugs, religion, or love. I must say for me the overriding things that has so completely turned my life upside-down and inside-out has been the experience of falling in love. While there are many reason I don't want to write too much about the experience, one of the biggest things is how syrupy sweet I feel about the whole affair. I'll call the person I'm with, ML for My Love. We seemed to have formed such a disgustingly saccharine couple that while I often get looks of empathic joy and happiness from complete strangers at our public lovey-dovey displays, I feel just as often looks of jealousy mixed with nausea and I completely understand. So for now, I'll just say that I've found the person with whom I'd like to spend the rest of my life, and everyday I find my life start anew.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A Strange Night
So I've recently started at my new residency program. Done with the horrors of a medical internship and relaxing with the easy life of a medical subspecialty. And I must say, I really like most of my new coworkers. Last week, I ended up meeting one of my senior residents for a drink, staying out most of the night and sharing all kinds of secrets that should not be shared by people in the medical profession. Though I assure you, there are a lot of us with all kinds of secrets. So this particular girl, I'll call Doctor Ballerina (DB). Before going through the whole medical school / doctor route of life, she worked as a professional ballet dancer. So you can kind of already see why we would get along. It's amazing what kind of lives doctors lead before they ever put on the big white duty coat isn't it?
In any case, the strange night of the title here refers to 3 other people that have yet to be introduced in this blog. For now, I'll try and write the condensed version out right here.
So it's Friday night, DB and I had some tentative plans to hit the town. Unfortunately she seems to have taken ill that day so she had to stay home and recover. Meanwhile, I could have just gone out by myself and lived my life, but I ending up staying home, getting stoned and drunk while and eating cheap, shitty NYC mexican food and watching baseball. It was some amazing baseball on that night though, Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. Anyways, game's ending and I notice a text from this girl that I wanted to get to know a little better. It's midnight and she's asking what I'm up to and if I want to come out tonight. So immediately I'm pretty happy, thinking booty call all the way. I do a little booty call dance and get dressed to head out.
Riding my scooter down to meet this girl, it dawns on me though, the girl that I wanted to plow has the same name as one of my new co-residents. Also, the girl that I wanted to plow, though I never put her phone number in my phone, I realize it's a different area code than the area code tagged to the text message that got me out that night. So I'm starting to wonder if what I thought was going to happen would actually be happening at all that night. It didn't go at all as planned.
I got to the bar and it's not the girl I wanted to plow, it's one of my new co-residents. She meets me outside the bar and informs me that another of the senior residents, the exact guy that earlier in the week within 30 seconds of meeting him, I told this girl I did not like this guy; this guy was there. The night was being quickly demoted from booty call to rescue operation. And I was a little annoyed.
So I got the 3 of us to leave the place they were at. We went to a much quiter, more chilled out pub and I had a drink and made some small talk. And as quickly as I could, I let it be known that I had to cap it and offered the girl a ride home.
So that's how we got out of there. This girl and I then ended up at some koreatown spot which probably would have been pretty cool except that I was a little annoyed and even more, that shitty mexican food was starting to destroy my gastrointestinal tract.
So then I took her home, told her that I was glad to help bail her out and reminded her to please never ask me to do that again.
Then I barely made it home. Dropped an explosive deuce, barely made it to the bed and passed out.
That was the strange night. More about the fallout from that night later on...
In any case, the strange night of the title here refers to 3 other people that have yet to be introduced in this blog. For now, I'll try and write the condensed version out right here.
So it's Friday night, DB and I had some tentative plans to hit the town. Unfortunately she seems to have taken ill that day so she had to stay home and recover. Meanwhile, I could have just gone out by myself and lived my life, but I ending up staying home, getting stoned and drunk while and eating cheap, shitty NYC mexican food and watching baseball. It was some amazing baseball on that night though, Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. Anyways, game's ending and I notice a text from this girl that I wanted to get to know a little better. It's midnight and she's asking what I'm up to and if I want to come out tonight. So immediately I'm pretty happy, thinking booty call all the way. I do a little booty call dance and get dressed to head out.
Riding my scooter down to meet this girl, it dawns on me though, the girl that I wanted to plow has the same name as one of my new co-residents. Also, the girl that I wanted to plow, though I never put her phone number in my phone, I realize it's a different area code than the area code tagged to the text message that got me out that night. So I'm starting to wonder if what I thought was going to happen would actually be happening at all that night. It didn't go at all as planned.
I got to the bar and it's not the girl I wanted to plow, it's one of my new co-residents. She meets me outside the bar and informs me that another of the senior residents, the exact guy that earlier in the week within 30 seconds of meeting him, I told this girl I did not like this guy; this guy was there. The night was being quickly demoted from booty call to rescue operation. And I was a little annoyed.
So I got the 3 of us to leave the place they were at. We went to a much quiter, more chilled out pub and I had a drink and made some small talk. And as quickly as I could, I let it be known that I had to cap it and offered the girl a ride home.
So that's how we got out of there. This girl and I then ended up at some koreatown spot which probably would have been pretty cool except that I was a little annoyed and even more, that shitty mexican food was starting to destroy my gastrointestinal tract.
So then I took her home, told her that I was glad to help bail her out and reminded her to please never ask me to do that again.
Then I barely made it home. Dropped an explosive deuce, barely made it to the bed and passed out.
That was the strange night. More about the fallout from that night later on...
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Skinny White
So I don't particularly have much in common with most doctors. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about how as a medical student and how even now as a resident, people would come to give lectures or talks and occasionally remark about how as a group, we as physicians must be such great future-thinkers and gratification-delayers. My entire youth it was widely regarded that I'd never live past the age of 21 due to my complete and utter lack of regard for my own safety and well-being combined with my penchant for extremely dangerous, self-destructive behaviour. I mean, if you think about it; isn't everything dangerous by necessity fun? (okay, there are exceptions, but seriously, think about it for a moment)
So that brings me to Skinny White (SW). He's Irish, he's probably the palest person I know this side of albinism, and he's about 6'3", 135 pounds. I once convinced this guy to do some push ups with me and I couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes. So yeah, skinny and white, Skinny White. I remember first meeting this guy during intern orientation. I had on an oxford shirt and a necktie, trying to keep up appearances. He was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of an underground techno music club. Not long after, a bunch of us about-to-be interns, headed out for drinks. One by one, the flat-leavers left us and SW and I were the last 2 men left standing. We ended up walking around Brooklyn that night, having a drink at every bar we could find. I don't especially recall the cab ride home too well, but I did recall thinking that I was probably going to have to make friends with this guy. A common occurence between the last 2 people left standing after a hard night's drinking.
I would also soon discover, that both SW and I had previously trained in the arts of turntablism and also we had both at points in our lives made money busking through our respective juggling acts. I mean, how often does that happen that 2 physicians meet who also have extensive experience in the world of house, techno, turntablism and juggling.
Later on, ask we worked in the hospital further, we also both got reputations for being very smart and very arrogant. Because if you know something that the other people on your team don't, I guess you're not supposed to bring in the relevant research and give power point presentations and try to educate the rest of the team about the things that you know. Because that's just the arrogance running out of control right there.
In any case, you can imagine the hi-jinks SW and I got ourselves into. We were both, young, single, and brand new to NYC. The specific hi-jinks I will leave for another time. In terms of women, my plan was to just go around and knock out some hood-rats, you know; boom-boom-boom. SW was looking for something a little deeper and more meaningful, I think.
The person he ended up with was Worried Girl (WG). This name may not be totally fair because she really is so much more and I really do love her to pieces. However, to me at least, her defining characteristic is that she gets wound up over certain things, certain things about which SW and I would never give a second thought. For instance SW once lost his phone and because WG couldn't reach him, she obviously asummed that he was dead or kidnapped or something so she called the police and put out an APB to get the guys that took out SW. That was a tough day for SW, especially because it was my ass that had to go bail him out of jail. But whatever, we can laugh about it now.
(most of that above paragraph was fictional, if you were keeping score)
Anyways, that's the brief intro to SW and the even briefer intro to WG.
So that brings me to Skinny White (SW). He's Irish, he's probably the palest person I know this side of albinism, and he's about 6'3", 135 pounds. I once convinced this guy to do some push ups with me and I couldn't stop laughing for 15 minutes. So yeah, skinny and white, Skinny White. I remember first meeting this guy during intern orientation. I had on an oxford shirt and a necktie, trying to keep up appearances. He was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of an underground techno music club. Not long after, a bunch of us about-to-be interns, headed out for drinks. One by one, the flat-leavers left us and SW and I were the last 2 men left standing. We ended up walking around Brooklyn that night, having a drink at every bar we could find. I don't especially recall the cab ride home too well, but I did recall thinking that I was probably going to have to make friends with this guy. A common occurence between the last 2 people left standing after a hard night's drinking.
I would also soon discover, that both SW and I had previously trained in the arts of turntablism and also we had both at points in our lives made money busking through our respective juggling acts. I mean, how often does that happen that 2 physicians meet who also have extensive experience in the world of house, techno, turntablism and juggling.
Later on, ask we worked in the hospital further, we also both got reputations for being very smart and very arrogant. Because if you know something that the other people on your team don't, I guess you're not supposed to bring in the relevant research and give power point presentations and try to educate the rest of the team about the things that you know. Because that's just the arrogance running out of control right there.
In any case, you can imagine the hi-jinks SW and I got ourselves into. We were both, young, single, and brand new to NYC. The specific hi-jinks I will leave for another time. In terms of women, my plan was to just go around and knock out some hood-rats, you know; boom-boom-boom. SW was looking for something a little deeper and more meaningful, I think.
The person he ended up with was Worried Girl (WG). This name may not be totally fair because she really is so much more and I really do love her to pieces. However, to me at least, her defining characteristic is that she gets wound up over certain things, certain things about which SW and I would never give a second thought. For instance SW once lost his phone and because WG couldn't reach him, she obviously asummed that he was dead or kidnapped or something so she called the police and put out an APB to get the guys that took out SW. That was a tough day for SW, especially because it was my ass that had to go bail him out of jail. But whatever, we can laugh about it now.
(most of that above paragraph was fictional, if you were keeping score)
Anyways, that's the brief intro to SW and the even briefer intro to WG.
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