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Thursday, 1/29/04
Sick. Gah. Headache. I've figured out how to eliminate the glare on the screen. I rarely take
sick days - it almost requires more work than actually going, and everyone gets pissed because you are not there. I
had to wake up all my patients this morning to give them the news. I emailed the clinic to let them know the supervision
schedule plans for the day, and to let the secretarys know that I wasnt able to get in touch with one of my patients due to
his phone not accepting private numbers. The secretaries are helpful to the residents as long as we ask politely and
bring in baked goods. So I try to do most of that work myself, and ask them to pitch in when I really need it, like
today.
Oooh, the painkiller is taking effect. When I move I am woozy. Pain that doesn't respond to NSAIDs
and acetaminophen really sucks, because then you have to proceed on to the baclofens and vicodens and percocets and those
pills make me pukey. Better that I lie here on my bed with the sheet over my head and the laptop providing a warm
glow not intense enough to make the headache worse.
Maybe later I will move beyond the world wide web and peek my head out into real time and space.
I'll let you know what happens then.
Already ate breakfast, though (thanks be to god the refrigerator light doesn't work). Cottage cheese and yogurt.
Ate a flour tortilla with some low fat cheese on it too. Should hold me over until noon.
And here's a view of much of my apartment. On the bottom left you see one of my new paintings. Then the TV,
flanked by the speakers my Dad bought when he was 20. Hey, they still work. Speakers and roaches will survive
the apocalypse. Up the middle is the narrow hall leading up to my bedroom loft, where I have spent most of this morning.
On the right is my swiss ball in the foreground, then the small refrigerator, cleaned but drying dishes on the stopetop, and
the tiny excuse for an oven over that. Not much room but good for mulling about in whilst sick.
I'm certain I will check in later. Salut.
Update 2:23 pm. Headache has calmed down a bit. I'm afraid to go out into the sun, and I have a hard time
leaning over, but other than that I can do the things I need to do around the house. I even hung up a picture and thought
about doing my bills.
Meals (I probably did this earlier but this is an add on, right?)
yogurt, cottage cheese
flour tortilla with low-fat cheese
chicken, brown rice, low-fat cheese
tuna putanesca
probably kashi+yogurt (ran out of milk)
exercise : ha! My head would explode. Does sweeping count?
Wednesday 1/28/04
Got my laptop! The first thing I did, of course, was to crash it. I tried to run a DVD (The Two Towers, if
you were wondering) without installing the DVD driver. Oops. Everything else was installed, though. Unlike
other computers, there's no ctrl/alt/del to warm reboot the thing when it crashes. That old standby unplug doesn't really
work either, because of the battery. So I closed it up, waited for the battery to run down by morning when I woke up,
and revved the machine again. Seems to work fine. I left it at home with the cat and came to work.
Here is my office, at least my office every day except for Tuesdays, which is to say it isn't my office, but I borrow
it for much of the week... all right, had a big break there. Almost immediately after I took that picture a late patient
walked in. So, now I'm back at home. 8:32 pm eastern. Typing on my laptop. The backspace is abnormally
far away, but otherwise it is a pleasant experience. I spent most of the afternoon copying my CDs onto this thing, taking
up about 1/4 of the gigantic memory stores. I ought to have been cleaning my apartment... but that can wait. I'm
on back-up call on Friday. I love cleaning my apartment while on call - it feels like I'm getting away with something.
Meals today:
1. cottage cheese/yogurt (1% cheese, nonfat yogurt, but I do use the added sugar kind. I've taken to mixing the no salt
added cottage cheese with the regular salted kind)
2. nonfat cafe latte from starbucks (the medical student who stayed with me last week left me a starbucks card as a parting
gift - !!)
3. spinach/squash/chicken (always skinless boneless breast meat about 3oz or half a breast for each serving, this
time cooked in aluminum foil packets with
fat free italian dressing marinade)
4. spaghetti, tuna, olives, tomato sauce, garlic, basil (tuna putanesca recipe minus the anchovies - not that I
mind anchovies, but I ran out - anchovies melt away in sauces, add tons of flavor, are kept in healthy olive oil, and cost
less than 25 calories each for a recipe of 4-6 servings. Not too shabby)
5. yogurt, kashi golean crunch
6. orange, 2 glasses red wine
exercise:
4 mile walk
chest/back weights
Right now I'm putting together a mix CD - it's tough getting the spicy songs interspersed with the whiny songs interspersed
with the modal/funk interesting songs... next I will try another DVD (cross your fingers for me).
Tuesday 1/27/04
I'm still waiting in great anticipation for my new laptop, which I ordered last Monday online. I've wanted one for, oh, eight years or so, but never could justify the expense.
But now they are so fast and small, and I will definitely need one in June... now I have a chance to figure out how it all
works before then. I still can't quite afford it but I will be able to afford it when I move in with Rich,
which is in June. I can float the extra money until then as long as nothing comes up that is drastic.
Good news of the day - I unstuck the zipper on the right hand pocket of my coat. It took several plastic utensils
and about twenty minutes, so this is all very exciting.
Gads - meals on Saturday night and Sunday were just a loss. I went to a 40th birthday party for a friend of a friend.
Though I didn't eat all that much (probably 2 meals' worth of food), I drank 3-4 glasses of wine and danced like a total fiend.
My dancing is kind of a cross between LL Cool J and Elaine from Seinfeld, seeing as how my instruction came from the cardiofunk
classes I took in med school. (To be clear, they do not teach cardiofunk in med school, just at the gym near
the med school).
Sunday was mostly rest and watching all those reality makeover docudramas on TLC and Discovery. I am a complete
addict to Trading Spaces, What Not to Wear, Clean Sweep, Monster Garage, Mythbusters, Monster House, and American Chopper.
If someone is making something on TV and it's not scrapbooking, I'm watching. Was able to squeeze in some lower body
with Rich's heavy dumbbells, so that was cool.
Consumer Reports just came out with a review of infomercial fitness products. Their overall impression is not surprising -- for fancy
machines, the best place is a gym. Soloflex/bodyflex is good quality but expensive. The Crossbow they tested had
some quality problems, but seemed like a good deal. Everything else - all the Body By Jake stuff, any ab rockers
just wasn't worth it. For home workouts, a bench, some freeweights, some bands, and a Swiss exercise ball and maybe
some aerobic videotapes are great and cheap.
They also looked at the Treadclimber, which seemed interesting on the infomercials. Thing is, it doesn't go any faster than 4mph. It would be
nice to run a little bit on a big treadmill machine, I would think, if I were to buy one for home. It also costs $2000.
Yikes.
Yesterday's meals and workouts - (back on the wagon again...)
75 minutes walking
25 minutes elliptical trainer
1. cottage cheese/yogurt
2. chicken breast, squash, sweet potato, spinach
3. kashi go lean crunch, yogurt
4. chicken breast, squash, sweet potato, spinach
Today:
30 min walking
25 min elliptical trainer
biceps/triceps/shoulders
1. yogurt/cottage cheese
2. birthday cake slice (off the wagon)
3. EFL green chili
4. EFL green chili
5. chicken, spinach, squash, sweet potato
All right. Back to work.
Saturday 1/24/04
Sleep! Finally! My diet coke had tasted so good the last few days it ought to have been illegal. This
morning it's just the usual bone-dissolving elixir of daytime.
First thing's first - I've moved on in oil painting from gridded abstracts on a burnt umber background to flowers.
One day I really ought to stop and learn how to paint. But in the meantime, canvases are dirt cheap (I had no idea),
and I've only ruined a sweater and one pair of pants. Of course, now that I think about it, I guess for the sweater
(I stuck my elbow in pink paint) I could just paint over the spot in green (the original color of the sweater). The
pants were already a loss.
Oils are indestructable - here's my picture -- go ahead, try and see where I stuck my elbow in it. And you'll notice
the picture is cut off, because Mr. Knightley wanted in on the action.
I have to amend Thursday's meal list - no soy burger combination dinner for me! I went to Laurel for an applicant dinner. It's interviewing season for the Match, and everyone flies in from everywhere to try to get a spot in my residency program, and we give them free dinner, and residents
go to eat for free too. So I had the duck (not too much, though no doubt more than I should have - the serving plate
had half a duck on it!) and some cranberry stuffing. Oh, and red wine, and a little cheescake. Eating out is a
dangerous endeavor.
Friday's meals were slightly better, and we even went out again, this time to O'Leary's on Beacon Street:
1. cottage cheese/yogurt
2. roast beef, grapes, lettuce, small pieces of melon
3. protein pancake
4. 3 chicken fingers, one onion ring
5. sushi
Today I will have to make Rich bring up his free weights from the basement. I would have brought my own, but it was
either Mr. Knightley and the painting (which I have to finish and have dry in time for my mother's birthday - she'll open
that up and think "what the f%#$?" only my mother would never swear, except to say damn or something.) or the weights. Does anyone know how long
it takes for oil paintings to dry?
(several hour google interruption leading to numerous learn-to-paint-online free lessons..)
The answer, unfortunately, is weeks to months! I will have to go out and buy acrylics in the same colors and copy,
because the painting surely won't survive a US postal trip to Texas while wet. Maybe I'll wait to send them the painting
for their anniversary or something.
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