lies and the lying liars who tell them

I was just thinking the other day about what damn liars doctors are. Especially about stuff that will hurt. Why is it that doctors will never tell you up front that something is going to hurt? We all just shroud it in euphemisms and hope that people won't catch on until it's too late to run away. Well, let the lies end. Here are the euphemisms and their translations.

"A little pinch" = This is going to hurt.

"This may sting a little" = This is going to hurt.

"You're going to feel some pressure" = This is going to hurt.

"You're going to feel a lot of pressure" = This is going to hurt a lot.

"This might be a little uncomfortable" = Don't scream too loudly in pain when I start jamming this pointy thing into you

"This portion of the procedure is always extremely stimulating to the patients" = If they were awake, this patient would tell you this is the sensory equivalent of getting their kneecaps sawed off (which some of them are)

And finally, my favorite, said while performing spinal anesthesia: "You're going to feel a little prick in your back" = This is going to hurt, and also, try not to laugh at what I just said.

Currently eating: Baklava. I love baklava. Some people don't like it because it's too sweet, but of course it's too sweet, it's puff pastry soaked in honey. That's the whole point. If you want not sweet, go eat some celery or something, you commie.

christmas came early this year

Cal got some new toys yesterday. They were kind of supposed to be Christmas presents, but we busted them out as soon as we got home because we wanted him to get maximum use out of the stuff before he outgrew it all. Also, because we are total suckers for this kid. That is the only explanation for us going into Buy Buy Baby "just to look" at the baby containment systems (we wanted to get something that could double as a Christmas tree fence to defend against canine siege) and walk out with $80 worth of baby gear. We are WEAK.



That's one of those bouncy chairs on a spring that you affix to the top of a door. Cal is just starting to get the hang of this one, but he's going nuts with it. Now every time you pick him up, he starts doing the Riverdance with his feet, because he thinks the world is a bouncy seat. Also, because we just can't get enough seats, we got him this:



I think it's called a Bumbo Seat or some such thing. It helps even little babies sit up, as long as they have head control. Also, it is apparently recommended by "Paediatricians and Orthopaedists" the world over. (I believe this is a European product.)

Upon viewing Cal in the seat, Joe said, "Great, now we can use it when he watches football with me." I laughed, because I thought he was kidding. However:




So naive.

Currently reading: Still working through "My Life." Oh my god, this book will never end. I feel like I've been reading it forever, and he's still running for his first term of presidency. Hey, remember H. Ross Perot? That guy was like the mayor of Munchkin City.

horn of plenty

We had a lovely Thanksgiving, thank you so much for asking. Even though I was on short call Wednesday evening and had to go into work yesterday, it was all OK, because I was on Peds Anesthesia for the week, and IT'S ALL FOR THE KIDS. Though I'm sure you all wouldn't have minded giving me an extra day off, right kids? Right?

Well then. This Thanksgiving was slightly different from our usual, in that usually, we have lunch at a restaurant and spend the rest of the day lolling around in post-prandial stupor, occasionally summoning the energy to play Super Mario Go Kart on the Nintendo or spontaneously burst into Christmas carol-y song. But this year, my dad is out of town, attending his 40-year high school reunion in Hong Kong. He's probably wearing a lampshade on his head right now, in fact. A Chinese lampshade. Also, we have Cal now, and while we've taken The Boy out to restaurants a handful of times, we'd never taken him to a fancy-pants restaurant, with multiple course and three amuse bouche to start. In fact, I don't even think the fancy-pants restaurant has a changing table in the bathroom. Because fancy babies don't eliminate, apparently. Or they all have Foleys and colostomy bags, thereby obviating the need for diapers.

So no restaurant this year. Instead, we went to my parents' house, where my sisters (Food Network devotees and makers of actual non-frozen foodstuffs) cooked. And lo, it was tasty.



There's my middle sister, slaving over the stove. (Where a woman belongs.) They made a million different kinds of vegetables. It was all very wholesome.



My youngest sister posing with the turkey. Don't get all excited, we bought it cooked already. Well, mostly cooked. We had to throw it back in the oven to get rid of the pink parts.




Meanwhile, Cal took a little nap. We didn't want to put him on the couch in case he rolled off, and the bedroom was too far away for us to watch him, so we just let him sleep on the floor. Because we are child abusers.



I didn't do any of the cooking or preparation, so what the hell was my contribution to the festivities? Well, I will tell you. Official food-taster. You know, to make sure nothing was poisoned. (Nothing was. Carry on.)



All at the table. See how Joe's totally not posed at all, even though he was the one who set up the auto-timer function on the camera.



While we eat, Cal does his best impression of a girl in a Vermeer painting.



He even deigns to sit still for some group shots, even though it really looks like he's just contemplating escape.



Our attempt at a family photo, though Joe points out that I look a little like I have an overactive thyroid in this one, with my eyes all a-bulge.



The postprandial stupor. Though I guess there's always room for another piece of peppermint bark.


Things that I'm thankful for this year: a healthy baby, my family, a job that I like, and the fact that I have the weekend off. Next week I'm back in adult world, rocking it in the cystoscopy suite. Burn, baby burn, prostate inferno!

Currently reading: Anesthesia stuff. Apparently, there's this in-service exam that I have to take in a few weeks that I am really not ready for. How do you devise a plan of study when you have to study everything?

blue hawaii

Yesterday I was checking the job listings board posted outside the Anesthesia office when I noticed a posting for a staff Anesthesiologist position in Oahu, Hawaii. And even though I do have this well-documented phobia about living anywhere outside of New York City, I started to have a little fantasy about taking this job and moving us all to Hawaii once my residency ended. We would have a nice little home in the hills, with a view of the ocean. There would be fruit trees growing outside our windows, and we would learn to make all sorts of edible delicacies from the tropical bounty. Our blood pressures and basal heart rates would decrease. We would wear linen all year round. Cal would grow up to be a tall, strong, bronzed god, all outdoorsy and one with nature, though not in that creepy hippy way. Maybe we would learn to surf.

But then I thought about the isolation and tropical storms and the high price of living dictated by needing everything flown in from the mainland and melanoma and volcanos and shark attacks, and started to think maybe it wouldn't be such a great idea to live in Hawaii after all. Still, it was sort of a fun fantasy while it lasted.

Currently reading: The latest issue of New York Magazine, as well as the latest issue of The New Yorker, in tandem. Sometimes it is hard to convince people that these are, in fact, two separate, and very different magazines from each other.

glass half empty




The security guards at the hospital entrance were unusually vigilant about checking IDs when I came in this morning. But really, would anyone come to the hospital at 6:30am on a Saturday morning unless they were contractually obligated to?

Coming on call this morning, I bumped into one of my classmates, who was just waking up.


MICHELLE
So, how was your call last night?

CO-RESIDENT
It sucked, man. Sucks.

MICHELLE
What, up all night?

CO-RESIDENT
No, I was in bed by 1am.

MICHELLE
And now you have the rest of the weekend off.

CO-RESIDENT
Yeah, but it sucks, man.

MICHELLE
Yeah, but at least you got a full night's sleep and you can enjoy the rest of your day. And you have all day tomorrow!

CO-RESIDENT
Yeah, but I'm still really tired. I got more sleep than I do when I'm at home, but I'm still tired. Fucking sucks, man.

MICHELLE
(Silence)


I refrained from reminding him that the Friday call resident would have a hard time eliciting sympathy from the Saturday call resident, and that he should quit his whining because I would have loved to be on last night instead of tonight and had a call like his. But then I realized--I can't rob a fellow resident of the right to complain. Why, the right to complain is all we've got! We work our asses off ridiculously long hours for no money and under insane pressure, and for the most part, we publicly grin and bear it. But to each other, we bitch. We bitch about the big things and we bitch about the small things. The complaining in itself is the point. It is one of the small, sad ways that we can let off some steam. So bitch away, fellow residents! Bitch away!

(Saturday call sucks.)

Currently reading: The current issue of The New Yorker, and "Embroideries," the newest Marjane Satrapi offering. It's really just a trifle compared to "Persepolis," (in the spirit of the old school SAT analogies, "Embroideries is to "Persepolis" as "Small Time Crooks" is to "Crimes and Misdemeanors") but, you know, it's entertaining enough.

Currently dying to see: The new Harry Potter movie. I probably won't see it until it's out on DVD, though. Not because there isn't an opportunity or available babysitting, but because it's hard for me to think about wasting one of those precious weekend nights with Cal just to go to the stupid movies. (We did go see "The 40-year-Old Virgin" this summer, but that was when I was still on maternity leave, so baby time was not such a hot commodity.)

What's the deal with this movie version of "Rent" that's coming out now anyway? It could either be pretty good or really bad. Almost all of the original cast is in the movie, which is kind of cool, but how does that work, exactly? Aren't they too old? Isn't the point that it's supposed to be about people in their 20's? Are they going to be screeching "Seasons of Love" with, like, canes and walkers and stuff? (Yes, I know it was only ten years ago.) Still, the whole story is kind of dated, if for no other reason than that impoverished bohemians could afford to live on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

born free

Yesterday in the PACU, one of my co-residents (whose name name may or may not be Adam) came up to me with his cell phone in hand.


ADAM
Hey, I have a picture for your to put up on your website.

MICHELLE
What, not more naked ladies?

ADAM
No, it's a picture of my med cart this morning.
(Shows phone-cam picture of the inner shelf of an anesthesia med cart with a brownish blob in the corner)

MICHELLE
What is that?

ADAM
Guess.

MICHELLE
I don't know, some brownish oval-looking thing.
(Realizing)
Wait a second...is that...is that a roach?

ADAM
Yup.

MICHELLE
There was a roach in your med cart?
(Soundless gagging)

ADAM
Third drawer. I'm going to show this to JCAHO.

[Special note to hospital administration: not really.]

MICHELLE
And it's one of those big ones too! Guh! What would a roach be doing in the med cart? There's not even any food in there. What would it eat?

ADAM
The propofol?

MICHELLE
What, the soy emulsion? Maybe if they were vegan roaches.

OTHER RESIDENT
Did you kill it?

ADAM
No, I stuck a Tegaderm on it.

MICHELLE
You stuck a...
(Mouth moves, but no more words come out)


(Later, passing in the hallway between cases)


MICHELLE
Hey Adam, how's your pet roach? I think you should call him "Spanky."

ADAM
He escaped.

MICHELLE
Out from under the Tegaderm?

ADAM
He's loose in the med cart.

MICHELLE
Wait, what room is this? Actually, don't tell me, I'd rather be surprised.


Currently thinking: Antibiotics are the greatest.

ballad of a sad boob

When you think of a lactation room, what comes to mind? Maybe floor-to-ceiling windows with gauzy curtains? Woodcut prints of mother and child? Gliders is muted earth tones? Enya piped in through hidden speakers? Or is it this:




This is my lactation room. Actually, despite looking like the Thai prison in "Brokedown Palace," it's a bathroom. Depressing, no? And to make things worse the past few days, I've come in to find a mop and a bucket leaning next to my setup. One time, they even took the bedsheet I use to conceal the works (to thwart potential nefarious pump thieves, and because not everyone likes to see boob pumps all out in the open) and used it to cover up the cleaning equipment. OK, first of all, why do the mop and bucket have to be concealed? Do you think you're going to pull one over on JCAHO by covering your nastiness with a SHEET? In this whole, giant hospital, isn't there a cleaning supply closet for that kind of thing? And secondly, they're using my pumping setup sheet (which touches my pumping supplies which touches my milk which touches the alimentary canal of MY CHILD) on top of a MOP that is used to sop up URINE off the bathroom floor. Yes, yes, I know, I'm pumping in the bathroom, but there's nowhere else to go. This all is not conducive to happy times.

Plus, after some ill-timed bragging about how well this whole breastfeeding thing was going, I seem to have come down with a classic case of mastitis. At first, it just hurt a little (to be clear: MY BOOB) and I just thought I would ride it out. But then later last night, I had the full-blown symptoms: increasing pain, redness, chills, myalgias. The only thing I didn't have was fever. I'm no OB-Gyn, but that sounds like mastitis to me. I knew that if I called my doctor, she would probably just pussyfoot around the whole thing, encouraging WARM COMPRESSES and HYDRATION and FREQUENT NURSING THROUGHOUT THE DAY (ha) and PLENTY OF REST (ha ha), and LET'S FOLLOW UP IN TWO OR THREE DAYS AND SEE HOW IT'S GOING...but dammit, despite the fact that I give that line to my patients all the time, I am very impatient and I know what I need and I DON'T HAVE TIME TO DICK AROUND. So I started myself on a ten day course of Augmentin. This is the one perk of my job, that when it comes to simple things like this, I can decide how I want to treat myself when I want to be treated. I took a good loading dose last night along with some Motrin, and I'm feeling a little bit better this morning. A little.

My boob is sad.

Currently eating: Cold quesedillas next to the mop.

the sunday night countdown

The best time of the week is Friday evening after work, provided that I have the weekend off. The worst time of the week, aside from 4:45am Monday morning when the alarm goes off, is Sunday night. Kids, that didn't-finish-my-homework feeling never goes away. Not that I really have homework per se, but there's that sinking feeling of not accomplishing all I wanted to do with my time off, and looking ahead to another week just as busy as the last. Sunday nights are like that moment on the roller coaster just after the ride crests that first big hill, but before you start the drop. And, to clarify, I hate roller coasters.

This Sunday night phenomenon is the classic example of my downfall--instead of enjoying the good things I have now, I instead fixate on the moment that the good times will end. And it's like this: Joe offered to bring Cal up to [University Hospital] during my call next Saturday so that I could see him. A normal person might think, "Awesome. I'm going to miss the baby being away from him for so long, but at least I'll see him for a little bit during the day." But I'm a little hesitant, because as happy as I'd be to visit with Joe and Cal, I know all I'd be thinking about the second they showed up is the fact that they would have to leave at some point, and then I'd get all fixated on the fact of them leaving me with only my cold, cold medications and syringes to comfort me, and then it would become very maudlin and worse yet, I might CRY AT WORK. Not that it would be the first time, but I always do it secretly, or pretend that I'm just adjusting my mask or something like that. Don't tell anyone. The only thing worse than crying at work would be throwing up at work. One of the surgery residents confessed that he was ill earlier in the week and actually did just that--threw up in the OR even--and when the nurses asked him if he got sent home afterwards, he just laughed. "No way, I still had three more cases to do." Such is the life we lead. Still--ew.

But anyway, even though in global outlook I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full person, when it comes to things I dread, I'm definitely a glass-half-empty type. Which I guess isn't so terrible, because that way, things almost never work out to be quite as bad as I think they're going to be. I have quite a bit of anticipatory dread, though. Like right now, I know that I'm on short call tomorrow as well as long call on Saturday, so it's going to be a long week with less than 24 hours off before the next week begins. I'm hardly going to have any time with Joe and the baby and I'm going to be all tired and bleary-eyed for the little time that I am home, and I'm just dreading it all. But I know that, come Sunday morning, I'll be post-call and the week will be over, and when I get home, I'll just be like, "Oh. Well...that happened." And it won't have been all that terrible at all, and more importantly, it'll be over.

And then a couple of hours later it'll be Sunday night again.

Currently reading: "My Life." Since he's been watching me chip away at this cement block of a tome for weeks now, Joe asked me if the book was good or not. Well, it's certainly not a page turner, but it's interesting. And I miss having an intelligent president, so this is how I cope. (Bush devotees, we'll agree to disagree.)

they had cloth napkins and everything




Hey, check out Cal looking all quaint and olden-timey in that photo. Oh wait, that's not Cal, that's me as a baby. My mom unearthed this picture from some dusty old album at their house. (She's the lady with the Peter Pan hairdo, by the way. Quelle 70's.) I guess Cal and I really do look alike. Except for those ears, though--thank God he got Joe's ears. Look at those wings sprouting out of the sides of my head. You'd think I might have superhuman hearing abilities with those things, but sadly, those ears are less evolution and more useless freak mutation.

I will put this picture up to remind myself that, despite having two residents as parents (and this was in the pre-work-hour-regulation era) I somehow turned out OK, and so will Cal. Why, I only robbed three liquor stores this week.


* * *


I was on call overnight on Thursday. Golden Weekend, baby! This almost nullifies the tears that will be shed next weekend, when I'm on 24 hour call Saturday. That's my Tin Weekend.

One of Joe's co-residents had a dinner party yesterday evening for all the folks in their second year class. This was possible because there are only four residents in their year--even with all the spouses and kids in attendance, there were only eleven people total, and not all of them ate. Cal is at a great age to take him to these dinner functions because he's not mobile yet, so we don't have to keep a constant vigil on him cruising the floors, stopping to chomp on particularly delicious-looking electrical outlets or glass shards. Also, he's not eating solid food--isn't even interested in solid food--so we can keep him on our laps while we eat and he looks on. It helps, of course, that he is officially a Very Good Baby, confirmed by a number of outside impartial sources. He just likes to sit and observe and flirt with people. Hate the game, not the playa.

The host of the party is what I would classify as a Real Grown-Up. He and Joe are the same year of training, but he had another career before switching track to do this whole ophtho thing, so he has some years on us. Also, owing to his former career, his wife's career, and the fact that he and his family do a lot of traveling, they are also what I would classify as Fancy People. Whereas we have a dog-chewed Ikea coffee table in our living room, they have an antique Viennese music stand. You know, that kind of thing. So of course, this dinner party, while casual, was also kind of Fancy, and I don't mean like the Fancy Ketchup they have at McDonald's. (I never understood that. Why is their ketchup "fancy"? Because it's in little packets? It's just ketchup. Not even catsup.) The food itself was pretty normal, but it was served in a very Euro way--antipasto to start, two pasta courses, followed by a meat course with a salad course at the end. Salad at the end = very Euro. No cheese platter, though. This is a good thing--I hate the cheese platter in lieu of dessert. In what universe does cheese substitute for a slice of chocolate cake? In a sick and wrong world, friends.

Currently eating: Leftover Halloween candy. Because we are Not Fancy.

the parent trap

We had a great weekend with White Grandparents (as I have dubbed them). They went nuts over the baby, and as promised, came bearing a department store aisle's worth of wardrobe items. As White Grandparents do not seem to be big believers in gender-neutral clothing, Cal is now the proud owner of a metric ton of little onesies that read "Future Quarterback" and "Little Slugger" (all in a vivid red-white-and-blue color scheme that I would classify as yay America!). When we all went out for a walk Saturday afternoon, White Parents were scandalized--absolutely speechless--that Cal didn't own a little baseball cap. And what, no jock strap?

Joe and I were remarking at the end of the weekend, though, at how parents seem to have the uncanny ability to hone in on the sore spots. That is to say, they seem to sense exactly what topics cause us the greatest amounts of angst, and then will ask questions or comments around that topic until you have a nervous breakdown. For Joe, this sore spot is Career Development. What will he do after residency? Is he going to strike out in private practice? Is he going to do a fellowship? Where is he going to apply, and in what field? Is he happy with the life of an ophthalmologist? Has he made The Right Choices? These are the questions that keep him up nights. He is stressed about Career Development. Very very stressed.

It doesn't help, of course, that Joe's parents are non-medical types, and as such, have basically no clue about the whole med student/residency/attending continuum. Joe's dad, I think, still thinks that we attend classes all day. Though this is not their fault, I think this adds to the whole aggravation factor, having to explain to them exactly what it is that he does at work and why it is that he's so busy all the time. SO, HOW ARE YOU LIKING OPHTHALMOLOGY? is the big question that his parents keep asking him, followed closely by, SO, NOW YOU'RE DOING OPHTHALMOLOGY...NOW WHAT? If allowed to blossom, the line of inquiry will turn to, WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE and SO, YOU SEE PATIENTS AT WORK? DO THEY CALL YOU "DOCTOR"? EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE JUST A RESIDENT? WHERE'S THE REAL DOCTOR WHILE YOU'RE SEEING ALL THESE PEOPLE? (That gnashing sound is Joe's teeth.)

My Achilles heel, sure to place me in fits of doubt instantly, and Cal and the topic of whether or not he's going to be totally warped by my being away from him for so many hours during the day. Most of the time, I think it's fine, he's FINE, tons of kids have working parents, and very few of them write tell-all books about how their parents' continual absence during the day turned them into clown-costume-wearing serial killers. But then there are times, long nights on call, late days at the hospital, when I think, oh my god, my child is learning to sit up RIGHT NOW and I'm not there to see it. And then maybe there are tears. (Luckily, there is a lot of gauze on top of my med cart. Also great for blowing your nose.)

This weekend, I was talking with my dad about what a great baby Cal is, how he's almost always happy and smiling and so good, blah blah blah, insert your own first-time parent rhapsodic rant here. And then I said, "I mean, I was worried about being away from him during the day, but I figure, he must be doing OK, right? I mean, he wouldn't be so happy if we were doing the wrong thing, right? Right?" Looking, of course, for affirmation. To which my dad said, "WELL, IT MAKES YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS, AND PLANNING FOR YOUR SECOND CHILD. I MEAN, YOU DON'T WANT HIM TO GET MORE ATTACHED TO HIS BABYSITTER THAN TO YOU." Aaaaagh! Aaaaagh! Our child isn't going to love us anymore! He loves Georgia more than me! Reminds me of the stories I used to hear about my cousin, who, when she was two, used to call Mister Rogers on TV "Daddy."

My mom, in trying to welcome me to the Working Mom's Club and (presumably) make me feel better about returning to work, only served to make things worse. "CAL GETS EXCELLENT CARE DURING THE DAY, AND IS RECEIVING SURROGATE MOTHERLY CARE FROM GEORGIA." Aaaagh, our nanny is serving as his surrogate mother! Real mother is out of the picture! Our child is going to grow up with a Caribbean accent and address Joe and I by our first names! I'm going to hell! Bad mother hell!

However, karma's a bitch, and I'm sure we'll be aggravating Cal ourselves before long. DO YOU REALLY HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR HOVERBOARD IN FRONT OF THE DOOR? AND HOW ARE THOSE APPLICATIONS FOR INTERGALACTIC UNIVERSITY COMING ALONG? What do you mean, we won't have hoverboards in sixteen years? Didn't you see "Back to the Future II"?

Currently reading: Nothing at the moment.

make it so

At the risk of sounding even more nerdy than my usual, let us speak, for a moment, about "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Look, I don't care what you say. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was an awesome show. Far better (to my mind) to the cheese of the original, and obviously superior to its second-rate spinoffs--"Deep Space Nine," (kinda bad) "Voyager," (kinda worse) and "Enterprise," (never watched it, but badness is presumed). "The Next Generation" had good characters and good stories and sometimes things would explode. Groovy.


Clearly the reason the show worked as well as it did was because the character of Jean-Luc Picard was the motherfucking MAN. Though I was always confused as to why Picard, who was French, and raised on some vineyard or some such other quintessentially French thing, had a tony Shakespearean British accent, let's just pay that no mind for now. The reason that we will ignore it is because Patrick Stewart is cool. The best episodes were the Picard-centered episodes, the ones where he got to use his mad acting skillz and wow us all with his classically-trained charm. Like that one episode where his mind got taken over by that alien satellite from the long-dead civilization and he lived a whole life in 40 minutes IN HIS MIND and at the end of the episode he played the pan flute? AWESOME. Or how about that episode that was totally shades of "1984" where he was held hostage by the Cardassian warlord and he was all beaten down and tortured and in the end he's all, "There are...FOUR...LIGHTS!" Awesome. Or how about the series finale where he's all old and stuff and he's trying to convince people he's not senile and he's all puttering around with his old-guy shuffle muttering, "I'm traveling back and forth through time!" AWESOME. I've actually had the pleasure of seeing Patrick Stewart on Broadway (twice for his one-man show of "A Christmas Carol" and another for some Shakespearean thing--I can't remember what it was exactly) and I have to tell you, the man is The Man. (Though I heard that he gets quite annoyed when people call him "Picard.")

Riker was a different story. Well, to be clear, there were really two phases of Riker. Much like Elvis, there was the young, skinny, no-beard Riker (kind of a dick), and then there was older, fatter, beard-y Riker (who was less toolish and eventually grew on me). I think early Riker was written to be like this young hot recruit whiz-kid, but he just came off like a cocky little braggart yelling at people and throwing his weight around, not unlike some of the surgery residents that I've met. (I didn't just say that.) Older Riker was better because he was more mellow, but I was always grossed out whenever he was called upon to lounge about in open bathrobes in romantic storylines, because---ugh. I did like that not-so-subtly-disguised gay rights episode, though, where he falls in love with that hermaphrodite from the planet with no genders who nonetheless identifies herself as female. (The plot plays better than it sounds.)

Data was clearly the comic foil/surrogate Spock of the series (Mister Spock, not Doctor Spock), and I think he could have been a much lamer character than he actually was, because any show that has a ROBOT as one of the characters is flirting with cheese. ("Small Wonder," I'm looking at you.) Data was cool because he was all stiff and clueless and "what is this human thing you call love?" and not just a little bit like C3PO from Star Wars, except a little less shiny. And occasionally the writers would through Brent Spiner a freaking bone and let him have an episode where he got to do some DRAMATIC ACTING wherein he would play different characters (like Data's evil twin Lor--again, evil twin, flirting with cheese) or Data would get some sort of "emotion chip" or whatever excuse they could use to allow him to yell and weep and laugh and generally chew the scenery.

I never understood why Dr. Crusher had to go to medical school in the first place, because it seems like all she had to do was wave that little cell-phone beep-beep-beep tricorder thing over people to diagnose whatever problems they had (be it a syndrome in which their DNA is de-evolving, or a case of the creeping crud), and any treatment could be administered as some sort of painless injection/spray to the neck. Dude, anyone could do that job. Also, she taught me that the doctors of the future no longer wear white coats, they wear blue coats.

As if Dr, Crusher wasn't crippled enough by her limited knowledge of how to treat medical conditions without her space gadgets, she was also saddled with an unfortunate and nerdy son, Wesley. The phenomenon of Wesley Crusher has been seen in other shows (for example, "Inspector Gadget," and "Thundercats,") in which precocious children occasionally and implausibly save the day. Wesley got better as he got older and eventually got shipped of to Starfleet Academy (read: was not in every episode), but his "gee whiz!" air of wonder always annoyed me. Sorry, Wil Wheaton. You were cute in "Stand By Me" and everything, but god.

I think the show came out when I was in the sixth grade or so, and at that time, the only actor I could identify right off was LeVar Burton, by virtue of having watched every episode of "Reading Rainbow" ever filmed. I spent the first few episodes trying to figure out why LeVar was wearing what appeared to be a giant girl's hair barrette over his eyes, and finally realized, oh, he's supposed to be BLIND. What I don't understand is how they were able to develop the technology to let a blind man see, like, geothermal flux on a planet's surface, yet not able to see if a girl is hot or not. Hey, remember when Geordi fell in love with that lady scientist on the holodeck? And he was like, "I like your style, computer generated image!" Still, my favorite episode with Geordi was the one where he and his away team go to investigate some crash site on an alien planet, and all of them start mutating into these phosphorescent blue-veined monsters with melted together fingers--gah! Blue-veined monsters! I had nightmares about that one.

You might think that Michael Dorn got off the easiest of all the cast members because, with all that makeup and gunk that he had to wear for the show, he was the least likely to get typecast when he was wearing his regular face. In fact, the very opposite happened. When "The Next Generation" ended, he just joined the cast of "Deep Space Nine" and ended up marrying that chick with he worm implanted in her belly. (Yes, yes, I know, it was a "symbiant". Whatever. WORM.) Actually, no, I did see him in one other role--I think he was the "celebrity judge" on some second-rate bauty pagent. Miss Teen New Jersey or something like that. I kind of hated the Worf-based episodes, because they invariably dealt with some boring-ass Klingon political crap or warfare, and I found it all very boring. (Even though the Klingon ladies wore those breast plates with the hole cut out to showcase their ample bosoms.)

Finally, my most hated character on the show was Counseller Troi. I hated her because she was useless. Her only job, so far as I could tell, was to be on the bridge to "sense" things when they encountered other species, due to her magical telepathic powers. The problem is, the only things that she could sense were TOTALLY OBVIOUS, like, "they're feeling a lot of anger and hostility" when the party in question is totally attacking them, or "there is great sadness" when someone is fricking CRYING already. Um, excuse me, but duh. And anytime they actually needed her to read the mind in a non-obvious situation, she would just be like, "It's very cloudy. I can't make anything out." Well shit, I'm not telepathic, but I could tell you that. So so far as I could tell, her sole job on the ship was just to look generally fleshy and available in a variety of low cut (and often unfortunate) spandex outfits, and to be imperiled when outside influences take over her mind and cause her to lapse into a coma, which Dr. Crusher would invariably diagnose with her beep-beep-beep cell phone-looking thing and treat with some variant of the neck spray.

Ah, "Star Trek: The Next Generation." I miss you, you crazy show.


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Joe's parents are in town for the weekend to visit (meaning they will shove us aside to get to the BABY where's the BABY we want to see the BABY BABY BABY) so this weekend will be kind of busy. I'm trying to keep Cal on more of a schedule during the weekends though, because when he gets off his schedule (which entails a regimented series of naps in the morning and afternoon), he gets EXTREMELY grumpy come Monday. By Tuesday, he's usually back on track, but woe be it to the Monday caretaker to deal with his inconsolable weeping. "He has a hard time on Mondays," Georgia noted last week. Hey kid, join the club.

Currently reading: About upper extremity nerve blocks. I have to do a bunch of shoulder cases on Monday.

Because sometimes, a little self-affirmation is imortant.