Friends

It looks like I could finally be meeting people. It took a long time for me, since generally I'm a pretty outgoing person. But, here in my condo complex the average age is, judging by appearances, about 5-7 years younger than me and 10 years younger than G. When last Sunday I decided to spend some time by the pool only to find 20 people doing kegstands.. it was time to go back inside. Kegstands just aren't my scene anymore.

Yesterday I finally met someone closer to my own age who also has a golden mix. I was taking Tiger out to walk after work and our doggies ran into each other. The best way to meet people here I've found is when I have the dog.. he's an instant coversation starter since he's so unique looking. After chatting I found out the other golden's mommy just moved here from Atlanta six weeks ago and was also having a hard time meeting people who act their age! She's a hospital administrator at Tampa General. So, the two of us and our doggies went for a run together last night and had a nice time and a good chat.

Later in the evening I got an email from a group I signed up for MONTHS ago that was for professional transplants to get to know others who have just moved to Tampa Bay (minus the Meat Market). They're having an outing tonight at a sports bar to watch the Yankees/red Sox game. so, I think G and I are going to go and I think the girl I ran with last night might come too.

The funnest activity on their list (to me) is a kayaking trip next month. They're going to kayak from St Pete out to one of the barrier islands to watch the sunset, have food, drink sangria and have a bonfire. Then, we kayak back. I've never kayaked before and for 40 bucks I think it would be great fun! And, yet another way to meet more people who are also adventurous. Yay! I'll have to RSVP for this pretty soon. :)

On the downside this is my weekend to work Saturday and Sunday so I'm taking full advantage of my friday off. I got my car cleaned and then went shopping. yay shopping! I'm normally not a big shopper, but I needed clothes to wear to work since my clinic clothes are getting rather tired and they just look cheap (since they are). I got the best clothes my grad school budget could afford at the time. now, i've got a little more funding so I got some nicer looking dress slacks instead of 12 dollar gap khakis. They look a little more professional... thank goodness.

let the weekend begin! (sort of)

Hudson's first day home! 

Nephew Update

My nephew came home from the hospital today!! I don't know how they got him to do this, but he's already feeding himself!?? Or, my brother is really good at staging pictures ;)

Hudson Michael 

I'm an Auntie !

In the midst of Hurricane Rita pounding on my parents house, a litte ray of sunshine was born.

In Thousand Oaks, CA Hudson Michael was brought into the world at 6:18pm on September 23rd. He weighed 8lbs. 2oz and was 10 days late !! (my poor sister-in-law)

The new family is all doing well. Keri should come home soon and little Hudson is perfect. My brother even made it through the C-Section, which if you know my brother is a feat in and of itself. I'm proud of him. He sounded so excited on the phone when he called me Friday night.

I'm glad my mother didn't lose power before he was born, but she lost power about 3 hours later and didn't get it back until last night. She was hurt that I saw the baby pictures before she did.

Rita

I'm watching Hurricane Rita veer in on my friends and family. My parents are staying put since they're 70 miles inland. They invited an apartment dwelling friend over to stay with him, which made him feel much more comfortable than being in his first floor apartment near a creek.

I don't want to go to work today. I want to stay home and keep checking for email updates from friends and family. Most of them have packed up and left already. Some of them know it's going to be an 8+ hour drive.


175mph !! I can't believe this is happening again... and this time.. to people I love. Not that it makes it better or worse than any other hurricane, but this time it's personal.

Back to Normal

So, my schedule is finally locking in.

Mondays and Tuesdays at the office in Tampa. (prodominantly VA patients, which is most of the time pretty fun) I get the occasional grumpy person, but for the most part they're all happy someone is there who cares about them.. and they actually have a doctor in the room with them who will spend more than 10 minutes listening to them. I do as much as I can with the time I've got. I've also gotten more questions about Viagra's effect on vision than I ever thought possible !!

Wednesday's with Dr K in Bradenton. The same as my externship. Same happy office, same patients, same docs, different pay scale. ;) I love their office and wish it weren't so far away. I'd be there more than once a week.

Thursdays in Brandon. It's a Lenscrafters office, but the nicest one I've ever seen. The staff is so well trained and fun. The patients are also very nice. Not one grumpy person. Some are not so happy about the wait time, but I try to make sure they all leave smiling.. and most of the time I'm successful.

I work three Saturdays a month. It's hard, but being the new doc on the block it's expected. I get the crap days no one else wants.

I'm kinda worried about what's going to happen around Christmas and Thanksgiving. Some of the docs are already asking me about Chritmas. AHH! I haven't thought that far ahead yet.

Today was Dr C's first day back from a two week vacation. He seemed much happier and I was so glad to have him back. The doctor they have filling in for him (the one I'm inititally replacing) is SO MUCH SLOWER!! He can only see like 8 - 10 patients a day. He's nice, but old school and cant handle the volume this office does. This office is also not as high volume as some I've seen. But, I like that we actually spend time with patients. I hate offices where technicians do everything and then you see the doc for all of two or three minutes. You don't build up any confidence that way and the patients have no reason to return to you. There's no rapore. I told Dr C repeatedly I was so glad he was back... I think he appreciated hearing it.

Nip/Tuck

Season 3 starts tonight!! I'm so excited !!

quiz time !!

Even though I think the questions are skewed... here are my results:

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (23% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

And here was my favorite question:
Consenting adults should be alloewd to challenge each other to a duel or Death Match.

Classic !!

sleepy...

Another busy day at work. I was busy Friday, Saturday, and Monday. Sunday was the only day I had off in six days. I really needed it. I actually slept til 930 which is unheard of for me now a days.

G and I did do a whole lot this weekend. Since I had to work Friday and Saturday we had some late dinners at some pretty nice places both nights. His treat the first night and my treat the second. It was nice to be able to take G to a nice place and not worry about how much it costs. I'm not saying I'm going to do it every week, but it would be nice to do at least every few months. What I do need to do is go shopping for some more work clothes.

We did watch some movies.. so here are my mini-reviews:

Sahara -- passable, matthew mc. and penelope cruz. Eye candy for both of us. Kind of weak story line, but entertaining overall.

Alexander -- do yourself a favor and stay FAR FAR AWAY!! G and normally never walk out of or stop movies. We only made it through one hour of this three hour epic. The movie was HORRIBLE. dry, hard to follow, wallowed in the HoYay man love scenes between Collin Farrell and Jared Leto (they even looked uncomfortable hugging which make for the best unintentional comedy of the whole film). After an hour of this, when even gory battle scenes couldn't save it.. G and I turned it off.

I actually get a full weekend this week so I'm sure I'll be much more exciting for y'all then.

Busy

I can't believe it's already through Thursday! I've been so busy every day. Working hard, trying to make patients happy, and making some money. yay money!

Fortunately the patients seem to be happy. Someone today made an appointment for his son after asking what days I was in the office. It made me feel pretty good. :)

Tomorrow is the first day I get to work with Dr F. He hired me without even meeting me. Which, at the time, I thought was rather odd. But, it just proves the point that after you get that doctor degree.. no one cares what school you went to, what your GPA was, or even which externships you did. They just care that you made it through and passed the board. Which, in Florida, is a feat in and of itself.

I did get to have lunch today with the doctor that works across the street at my store's sister store. She was really nice, went to ICO, and gave me dirt on local doctors. (including ones I'm working with, which was rather fun since at the time she didn't know I was working with them) Heh. She knows now.

I got my first big doctor paycheck today. The funny thing was, it was bigger than any check I got in the last two months.. and it was for only two days of work !! I get another check tomorrow from the second office. Dr K has been paying me week to week since I only work one day a week for him. My credit card company is going to be SO SAD I'm finally making money. My bill will shrink exponentially, which will make them really sad.

Doctoring through the weekend

I'm still not quite used to being called Doctor. I'm sure I'll get used to it very quickly, but it's still rather foreign. I've made it through my first week working in Florida. It was rocky at time, but I'm getting into the swing of it.

The office on Fowler near USF is almost entirely VA contract, so I'm seeing former military persons every day. It's kinda neat to get to meet them all. Feel like I'm doing something, even though they're all no longer in combat situations. The VA has too many people to see to see them all in their space, so they contract with our office to see as many as we can.

I'm having a great time at the Lenscrafters office in Brandon. The staff is fabulous and they make me laugh. They also help out a LOT and are very knowledgeable. It's weird for me to switch gears and have people do things for me. At UHCO they made me do everything from I&R's to even dispensing my own contacts. Its taking me awhile to get used to asking the staff to do things for me. I know that's what they're there for, it just still seems weird to me I guess that I have staff. They work for me in a sense even though I'm not the one that owns the office. It's a rather weird transition for me to make. (especially since half of them are older than me)

And then of course there's Dr K's office. He's awesome and I've loved his staff for the last year I've worked there. I just wish it was closer so I could work there more than once a week.

Friday night G and I took the evening to go to MOSI (the museum of science and industry) here in Tampa. they have a traveling exhibit right now called Bodies which was really really cool. (for a science dork like myself) They have all these bodies that were preserved with polymer plastics, through a process I'm totally unsure of so I don't want to elaborate on how it's done. But, they most of them posed and you traveled through the exhibits and prosections to learn about the different body systems. Musculo-skeletal, nerve, circulatory, reproductive, digestive, etc. It really was interesting. i was having total flashbacks to gross anatomy the entire time! The funniest part was one of the guys from the museum who was working the room. he clearly thought he was shit cuz he worked at this exhibit. He was "trying" to answer people's questions about the bodies and things in the room. Clearly, half the time he had NO CLUE what the answer was and G and I were cracking up watching him pull shit out of his ass. I could tell a few people where smart enough to figure out this guy was full of it. You'd think he'd be smart enough to say he didn't know. But it was very fun for me to geek out on this exhibit.

And in other news my SECOND set of Nip/Tuck season 2 DVD's are also defective. I had to return my first set because disk 1 was almost unplayable. The second set amazon.com sent me only had one 2 minute portion that's unplayable, but it's still going back to amazon for a refund. I have a feeling the entire first run of these DVDs is bad. I'd be curious to see how many other people are returning them. I'm rather annoyed though, because the new season starts next week and I wanted to remember what happened last season before it stared !! Oh well..

HORNS BABY!!

Not quite the Rose Bowl, but I'll take it.

Texas 25

Ohio State 22


GO HORNS !!!!

Mommy WOW! I'm a big kid now!

Today was my first official PAID day as a real, licensed doctor. It actually, didn't feel any different to me. I'm doing the same job I've been doing for the last four and a half years. The only difference is, now I'm making three times as much! (well, at least 3x as much as I did as an unlicensed doctor.. I'm making THOUSANDS of times more than I did in grad school!) HA!

As far as first days go, I couldn't have started out with a better office than Dr K's. He's just so much fun and the staff is so nice and fun! I also get to see pathology there, which we don't see much of in a Lenscrafters type situation. Although, I'm sure I'll see some there, too.

And yes, some of them did comment that I was younger than their child/grandchild. But, I just shrug it off and tell them I was old enough to be their doctor SEVERAL years ago. ;)

College Football's Back !!

let it be known.. I LOVE college football!! My Texas Longhorns are back, baby. This year we WILL be the hell outta OU!!

I can't wait until next week: Texas vs. Ohio State. It'll be especially fun since I now work with two docs from Ohio State. Let the smack talk begin. ;)

No more CNN

I can't watch TV anymore. It's too upsetting. I keep thinking how easily this could have been me, or my family for that matter. My parents are safe in houston watching thousands of people flood into their city. All the hotels there are full.

My friend who's a dean at the University of Houston said she had lines around the building at the admissions office today with Lousianna students trying not to miss a year of college. They're taking as many as they can accomodate and even waiving out of state tuition for them.

I don't understand the mentaliy that would cause anyone to fire guns at a lifeflight chopper. Or loot Tv's or jewelry. I can understand taking essentials like shoes, diapers, formula, food, etc. But the non essentials.. ?? that's just poor planning on their part. who's going to buy what you looted for money? who? no one around has ANYTHING! you think they need a 40" plasma screen? (let alone a flooded one) geniuses.

So, I took to watching my netflix movies. I do understand what's going on. I wish there was more I could do. But for now, I'm cried out and I have to take a break. There's only so many times I can hear someone say "catastrophic" on CNN.