To do

Blog. It's number 3 on my list. Numbers 1 and 2--Blue Moon and shower--completed, I have no choice but to soldier on. This is me. Soldiering...

I'm tragically behind in my travel stories. Some of them now seem a little bit, well, for lack of a better word...outdated. Maybe pictures will help.


But first, a word about my trip to Boston. I went. I interviewed. I had dinner with Christine! She was a wonderful hostess (and a great blogess). Unfortunately for her, I was a little fried by the time I got to her. Interviewing has a way of sucking all of the life right of you. Or rather, me. The fact that we had fun is a credit to Christine's awesomeness, which more than compensated for the fact that I had spent all of mine a few hours earlier.

After my trip to Boston, I was home for three days. I have absolutely no idea what I did during that 72 hours. Hell, I may have been kidnapped by aliens. I just don't remember. (Although, from all I've read, the alien kidnapping is typically followed, almost immediately, by some sort of alien anal probing; and I think I would have remembered that.)

Oh wait, it's sort of coming back to me... I drove around in the snow for a few hours on Saturday night. My car door froze shut. The driver's side handle broke off. I spent a few days crawling around from the back seat to open the door from the inside. During one such maneuver, I stepped on a lint roller that had fallen out of my bag onto the floor of the back seat. I rolled off said roller and planted my face in the back of the driver's seat headrest. (Thank God for the padded headrest.) I dropped my car off at a mechanic's with a note that said, Please fix the door handle before I knock out my front teeth. Thank you.

Monday morning, at 4 in the AM, I headed to the airport to fly to Atlanta to fly to San Jose to ride to Palo Alto.

I started the trip by writing in my journal a bit...


This served two purposes. First, it gave me something to do when I wasn't in the mood to read my book. Second, it pissed off the guy next to me who really just wanted me to turn off the reading light so that he could sleep. When he decided he was going to hog the arm rest between us and spread his feet into the space where mine belonged, I turned on the light and began to write about the jackass sitting next to me. The passive aggression paid off. He retracted his appendages back into his own seat, and the two of us had a lovely flight...



In Palo Alto, they call this winter...


Because they do not know any better. Those poor fools. Poor warm, tan fools. But, you know what they say. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Take off your socks...


And eat outside...


It is important to try to blend in. One doesn't want to appear ethnocentric.

On my interview day, one of the residents was complaining because he had to cancel his facial reconstruction case because the patient had poison oak on his cheek. I laughed. He said, "What's so funny?"

I said, "You can get poison oak here...in January?"

"Well, yeah," he said.

"Ahh," I sighed, "this truly is a magical place."


The trip home was, as previously mentioned, way too fucking long. But, Lyle was right. The lights of LA County do look like diamonds in the sky...



I'm not sure what Mr. Lovett has to say about the ice on Lake Michigan, but it is also lovely from a couple thousand feet up...



And, finally, home again...


The clouds looked better from the top than they did from the bottom.

Clouds, a metaphor for, well...everything.

Sunday afternoon, I leave for my last interview. I suppose I don't have to say that I will be relieved to be done. But then, in a few weeks, I'll be bummed that I don't have an excuse to hop on a plane, skip out on a couple days of rounds, and meet some new people. The grass is always greener I suppose.

Grass, a metaphor for, well...everything else.

(Blue Moon not only hydrates but also makes things seem metaphorical that may otherwise, well...not.)