So we had a very nice Christmas. (Santa Christmas, not Jesus Christmas.) We saw family, Cal's enjoying his new toys, and Joe and I relished in our new Christmas morning tradition--jamming plastic widgets into other plastic widgets. From now on, I'm only buying toys that say "no assembly required." Either that, or floor samples.
Christmas Eve, as usual, we spent with my parents. We had dinner out at a restaurant, and Cal behaved himself reasonably well, or at least I assumed, as I didn't catch any dirty looks from my cursory surveillance of the dining room. He even managed to make a little girlfriend--actually what happened is that this girl, who was about two years old, came up to our table pointing and squealing, "LOOK DADDY, A BABY, A BABY!" We made some nice small talk with the dad, introduced our kids (the little girl was named Rowan) and basically let the two of them have their fun. On our way out of the restaurant, we stopped by their table to say goodbye, and I noted that Rowan's mom looked familiar. Though not until I got to the coat check did I realize that the reason she looked so familiar was because she was Brooke Shields. And that's my obligatory New York celebrity-spotting story of the season.
(Although, being a Too Cool For School New Yorker, I had to pretend how I TOTALLY DIDN'T CARE and didn't once crane my head to look back to gape at BROOKE FUCKING SHIELDS. Because I am too cool. FOR SCHOOL. But then I was proud at Cal for being such a ladies man to attract the attentions of celebrity offspring. An older woman, even. Now, as someone pointed out, all he has to do is befriend Tom Cruise's fetus, and then we would have a true love triangle.)
Despite all the angst of my previous postings, work has both fun and satisfying as of late, though I've come to grips with the fact that I think I'm essentially what I would classify as a High Stress Personality. Even when things are going well, I'm landing all my procedures, happy patients wheeling into the recovery room, I have secret stress bubbling underneath the surface. For instance, last night I had a purely aural dream, in which I dreamed that I was listening to the sound of a patient's pulse ox tone. No images, no plotline, just sound. Beep...beep...beep. LISTENING FOR DESATS IN MY DARK BEDROOM AT 2AM. Now tell me that doesn't make me officially crazy. I also think I'm taking this "constant vigilance" credo of Anesthesia one step too far. I think we're actually allowed to let down our guard when we leave the hospital to go home at the end of the day.
OK OK OK, so are all the movies I want to see:
- "Brokeback Mountain," though at this point, it's so hyped up that I'm sure I'll be disappointed. Unless it really is THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME, in which case I won't be.
- "Match Point," because it's the first Woody Allen movie in a long time that sounds like it might not totally suck (even if it is basically "Crimes and Misdemeanors" set in London. That said, "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was an excellent movie.)
- "Memoirs of a Geisha," because I liked the book, and because everyone keeps telling me that my youngest sister looks like Zhang Ziyi and I have to assess this for myself. (And no, you cannot date her, internet suitors! She's only in high school! Hands off, sex perverts!)
- "King Kong." No, actually, I don't want to see that. Well, maybe I do. Or maybe I don't. I can't decide.
- "Munich." See above.
- "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." No, I still haven't seen this yet. Stop yelling.
What I really need to do is go to Chinatown and get me some pirated DVD versions of these movies so I can watch them in the peace and quiet (and cheapness) of my own home. But there is such a large margin of error for these Chinatown pirate DVDs. On one hand, you might get an actual pirated copy of the movie. And on the other end of the spectrum, you might get the footage that someone shot in the theater with a hand-held video camera, wih heads bobbing up and down in front of the screen and the sounds of people whispering and coughing. Which could be fun in that "Mystery Science Theater 3000" kind of way, but only for a few minutes.
Currently reading: "Anesthesia Secrets." I am scared of this exam that I'm supposed to take. Because it's supposed to chart the learning and progress that I've made in the past six months, and I'm a little apprehensive that on paper, the academic quantification of all this learning and knowledge is going to tally up to some very tiny number. However, I can now turn over my OR and do my machine check or jam a needle into your spine lickety-split. Wish they would test me on that.
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