Knitting with the Plague

I've been hit by the plague, othgerwise known as a fabulous little respiratory virus that is not influenza, and therefore not covered by the little shot I got a few months back. It has me down and out for 5 days. I don't think I've been this sick as an adult. Every time I'm feeling better, it starts up again with the fevers and chills, and aches and sore throat. Ugh. This is getting complicated at work, as Healthcare Conglomorate terms any sick time greater than three days a "leave of absence."

Are you kidding me? I took one day as a vacation day, two as sick days, and now I need a NOTE FROM MY DOCTOR to go back to work. Oy vay. It makes me want to just hang a shingle out front of my house when I have my own practice, and keep the linear accelerator in the basement. Or at least remember not to get to close with Healthcare Conglomorate. Too much paperwork.

At least I've finished my Big Bad Baby blanket and a calorimetry to compliment my sister's scarf in time for their various events. Pics to follow.

The Exotic Perfumed Engine Weasel

Sometime last week, I started noticing a faint perfumey smell in my car. Originally I thought it belonged to the baby sweater I had bought my friend and kept in my car for a day, and had a nice little smell to it. But the sweater was gifted last Wednesday, and the smell persisted. It got stronger, and somewhat perfumey, and I thought maybe it was on my scarf. Then, as the temperatures PLUNGED into the depth of frozen hell this week, the heat in my car started to be on more frequently and in greater intensity, I noticed the smell increasing proportionately.

Yesterday, it got to the point that it smelled like a little old lady had crawled up inside my heater and died. It sounds awful, but I Kid. You. Not. It reeked like my grandma's perfume. So as I was driving to our friends' Superbowl party, I asked N if he smelled anything. He did, and I proceeded to see if he knew what it was. I shared my observation about the heat, and we further deduced that it only happened when heat was blowing through the lower vents. I asked if an animal could have gotten up inside there, and N claimed that it would smell much more rank than it did. He then added (totally deadpan)...."Unless it's an exotic perfumed engine weasel."

Hilarity ensued, we arrived at the party, and the car was so damn cold by the time we got back in it, that the weasel was forgotten.

Today driving around, I had no choice but to blast the heat or lose my toes and was nearly asphyxiated by grandma-smell by the time I got to work. By this point, the matter was concerning me ever more greatly, and I called my dad. I described the smell, and he asked whether it was sweet....and then proceeded to freak me out by suggesting that I could potentially have antifreeze fumes leaking into my car.

When N got home today, I sent him outside to the car to smell my coolant to see if it was similar in scent, and approximately ten minutes later he returned, with his hands behind his back and a very smug look on his face. "I present the exotic perfumed engine weasel." He holds out a dryer sheet, which he had found clinging to the under-part of my driver's side dashboard.

It had escaped the apartment on my shoe, and lived on the floor of my car for one very odiferous week. *slaps herself on the forehead*

N offered to nickname me the perfumed engine weasel, but I suggested that it sounds a bit kinky without the backstory.

;)

Ice Princess

Good mother, it's freezing here. My weather.com page tells me it feels like -18 degrees F. I am shivering away in my computer room right now, drooling over lovely wool yarns that I ought not buy, but I want to. I want a stash. N would argue that I already DO have a stash, but it only takes up one little square area in a bookshelf. So not a stash.

If I had a stash, I think I would snuggle up under all the balls of lovely warm wooly yarn goodness tonight, and not come out. That's just how damn cold it is. It is certainly too cold to go traipsing out to see my friend's band tonight, what with the dearth of downtown parking, and the smoky bar, and the cold, cold me. Sorry guys, I'll catch ya next time.

We do have to go out to the Superbowl party tomorrow, not because I'm terribly enamored of the Superbowl, but party because our friends throw this party every year, and next year we'll be in Ohio, and therefore not able to attend, but mostly because I am making an AWESOME black bean dip. It's called a black bean dip, but really it's mounds of melted cheesy goodness with some jalapenos and black beans thrown in for good measure. It's from our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I shall post it later, after I dig it out. Yum.

I was on call last night, for the first time in the last month that I will ever do general medicine wards. It struck me how much more comfortable I feel doing this now than at the beginning of the year. I think I've learned more in the six months of my intern year than in my last two years of med school, at least as far as amount learned per period of time goes. I can figure out what's wrong with a patient, I uaually have a reasonable idea of how to fix it, and if I don't I know who to call to get a specialty opinion. This does not mean that I have learned all that there is to learn about the art of internal medicine, of course not. But I've become a much better diagnostician and know how to handle patients in the inpatient setting. I suppose that's what this transitional year was all about. Ok, great, so can I be done now? I'm totally ready to move on to RadOnc and start treating cancers, my true interest and career. I'm over pneumonias and diabetes, I tell you.