Wednesday, August 24, 2011

some people never go crazy. what truly horrible lives they must live.

  • Current Scholastic Pursuits
    • Ahem, my apologies for another late update. Turns out that my new motivation to be the ultimate weekend warrior is making it hard to get around to blogging on Sundays. That said, it's all about balance - so hopefully I'll find the middle road between rockin' the weekend and getting on the computer to update you folks on my adventures.
    • I've spent the last month doing a radiology rotation. It was really good - I now have a solid approach for reading CTs and MRIs (which will come in handy when I'm on call at 4am in the future!). And even though I don't pick up on all the findings, I've had a pretty good track record lately of finding the important stuff. So yay me! The rads were, on the whole, really lovely people. They are fun, they like to crack jokes, and they wear jeans to work. They are also probably responsible for 95% of the carrot consumption of Manitoba (my rabbits Hoyle and Jazz making up the other 5%) - these radiologists like to do it in the dark! Like, pitch dark!
    • Maybe their mothers never heckled them about watching TV with the lights off or maybe they have congenital melatonin pathways that are independent of the influence of light... but whatever it may be, I can say with certainty that I am not immune! I need to photosynthesize!!! A month is radiology was like a month spent at the north pole in winter: perma-darkness. And you know what happens in perma-darkenss? Saroja hibernates.
    • There were days when I literally had to hold my eyelids open to stay awake. No amount of strongly brewed tea or early morning protein breaks were enough to keep me from head bobbing during handover. Eventually, I learned to stuff my chair to the back of the room, behind the rads peripheral vision and do my best not to drool all over myself as they flipped through scan after scan at lightening speed.
    • Then, one day, I had an epiphany: turn on the lights! Obviously, this could not be done suddenly because the rads would simply turn them all off again. So each day, I snuck in 5 minutes early and turned up the dimmer switch by one tiny degree... just barely enough to notice without tipping off the staff. And, after a period of 2 weeks, I'd finally brightened the room to an inhabitable state of pre-dawn light. What pleasure those fluorescent photons gave me as they kissed by heavy eyelids! Glory, indeed.
    • The interminable darkness of radiology was broken up by weekends of unmitigable fun. This past weekend, I went to a cliff known as Gooseneck in Ontario to go climbing with the Alpine Club. By the way, did you know that the founding location for the Alpine Club of Canada was right here in Winnipeg - aka land-of-the-unending-flatness? Bizarre but true. When I first moved here, I thought my days of climbing were over. But, as true luck would have it, there are some very impressive cliffs to climb with an highly enthusiastic crowd of fellow climbers willing to make the trek over the provincial border. All in all, I was very impressed with both the opportunity and the company. Hooray for the outdoors!!!
Prairie Sunset - driving home from climbing on Sunday night

2011_01_21-Chickpeas01.jpg

  • Favourite Thing on Etsy this Week
    • I found these beautiful prints on Etsy - they would be perfect for the bedroom, which is looking pretty stark since all the other art has been hung everywhere but there. I really hope this vendor makes a fish print, too, since it would round out the series perfectly. At only $15 dollars each, it took all my willpower not to snap them up in greedy delight.

A Sloth of Bears - Photographic Print


A herd of Swans - Photographic Print


A Colony of Rabbits - Photographic Print
  • What I'm Reading Right Now
    • Bedtime reading has been a little out of control recently. I've read no less than 4 books in the last month that are completely unrelated to my surgical education. This probably makes me a bad student (albeit a better person). Currently, I have not yet selected my next read, so I'm open to suggestions!


  • TED Talk I Watched This Week
    • This one is for you, Penguin: Dyan deNapoli on The Great Penguin Rescue.
 
  • Song of the Week
    • Check out this awesome song that Scarlett sent me. Absolutely breathtaking.


  • Thing I'm Most Grateful for This Week
    •  Being done radiology and going back onto a rotation where I'll get to see sunlight!
    • Also, meeting a fantastic bunch of outdoors-orientated people who are eager to trip!


  • Thing I'm Most Looking Forward to This Week
    • Another great weekend, filled with friends, going outside, and other adventures.
  • Bunny Photo of the Week
    • It poured on our first day at the cliffs for climbing, so we had to set up our tents in the rain and, eventually, pack them up in the rain as well. As always, I diligently set up my tent in my apartment after the trip to air it out. The bunnies came to investigate - from the looks of it, they would make excellent camping guests. They were really quite well behaved inside the tent!

    1 comment:

    Penguin said...

    I'm still shocked that they didn't nibble on the tent!

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