For a site whose participants pride themselves in being unique and different, I am overwhelmed and disappointed by the amount of complete and total ignorant sheep here. They are just as bad as our milk toast society they so actively dislike. Really. It's gotten pathetic. So, with that, I figure I will save my $48 and bid you farewell.

Commence the semiannual check-in, people.

I've been rather disenchanted with SG over the past few months. For this being a group of supposedly intelligent, open-minded, forward thinking adults, there is an overabundance of whiny titty babies and ignorant dumbasses. I don't have a lot of spare time, so I'm hardly going to spend it in an arena where perfect strangers who claim to be liberals openly shit all over others for having different opinions, and do so in immature and disrespectful ways. Oh yeah, perfect strangers who, for the most part, are probably 10 years younger than me with a fraction of my education or experience. Hey, OK then. I've been relegated largely to lurking now and just looking at pretty pictures, which is fine.

I finished my MBA in August. My BF started his MBA two days later. It is kicking his ass and he is working his fingers to the absolute bone, and I am so so so so so proud of him. I am on the hunt for a job for when my residency is over next summer. This has been challenging, particularly given the crap ass economy. It's OK... it's only November, so have plenty of time left before I enter full panic mode. It is way too hot for November, and I'm tired of air conditioning. My BF started his other sleeve and it looks super hawt. We are talking about getting married, which doesn't totally freak me out like I thought it would, which in turn freaks me out. We opened a joint checking account yesterday. I just ate an enormous amount of butternut squash, and I'm a little concerned as to what this is going to mean for my colon tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning is going to be a little sketchy as it is because I'm going to a different hospital tomorrow, so have to leave early, and I want to vote before work too. And get the requisite latte somewhere along the line. If I'm shitting myself blind, I'm going to be all kinds of late. I have, not by choice, inherited two outside kitties whose mommies abandoned them when they moved away from the complex. They are so very cute and friendly and they are growing on me. I kind of want to bring them inside. I don't understand why one manicure can last three days and another manicure can last a week when the same polish and all is used. I'm going to have to do them again tonight. I am flat ass broke right now, and I hate that.

There are cupcakes in the kitchen. Why am I not in there, scarfing one down?

Well. It's been a while, huh.

I have been balancing precariously on the edge of Massive Burnout over the last six months or so. God bless it, the fucking MBA will be done in August -- having that done and gone will make every day seem like vacation for a while. I'm about to end the 3rd year of residency, and start the 4th and last. I interviewed for chief resident last month, and the dumb fucks who head our department still haven't officially decided on which of us to bestow with such a title. My fear is that I will have to share it with one of my coworkers, who may be one of the biggest fucking cunts on the planet, which means it will be even more strained and awkward than it is now. Joy. I really haven't actively disliked another human being as much for many years. Selfish, self-righteous, mean, two-faced. And such a fine actress, who lays it on thick when bosses are around -- they think she's just awesome. It kills me, but we only work together for 13 more months, after which she can go to a hick state in the deep South to do a forensics fellowship, and I can stay in a real city and start a normal job, that doesn't involve maggots or rape kits.

I can still smell today's first autopsy on my hands, after many washes with skin-shredding, industrial strength hospital soap. Blech. She had been dead since Thursday. Long holiday weekends are not always good, because these things sit and rot until we get to them Tuesday. I know autopsy makes for good party conversation, but I will be so so so glad when I don't have to do them anymore. I need 50 to be board-eligible, and today's make number 43 and 44, I think. The dissection and actual physical work is fine, it's the reams of paperwork that haunt me for the following three months that I deeply and greatly despise.

There was supposed to be a cute picture of myself and my partner here, but it's not showing up. I think the photo inserting process on SG is just bullshit, and I'm also sorry you have to right click to see all the kitty goodness in this post.

We have been bickering like little bitches lately. He is stressed. I am stressed. Collectively, we need a wife. We simply do not have the bandwidth to tend to the administrative duties associated with running a household. I don't know how people with kids do it -- I really, really have no clue. Xanax, I guess.



Why the cat totally adores panties, clean or dirty, is beyond me. You'd think the clean ones wouldn't be as exciting, but evidently she thinks otherwise.



On the up side, Sprinkles cupcakes finally, finally, FINALLY opened in town. Being from Beverly Hills, they are fucking expensive ($20 for 6) but very delicious. Any cupcake is good, but these were especially tasty. The red velvet was just superior, although I think this one is lemon:


We went the first weekend they were open, and oh my god, the pandemonium! You'd think they were giving the fucking things away, and in a city full of starved anorectics, that is somewhat oxymoronic. There was thousands and thousands of dollars' worth of plastic surgery and very nice handbags squeezed into one wee shop, panting for cupcakes. There was this one girl (admittedly, hot) who even showed up in a thong bikini. And flip-flops. That's it. To stand in line for cupcakes. It was not so very hot out that day, and I was a little confused.



My friends and I are going to try to get Madonna tickets for Vegas in November. It may not work out, but I think we're still gonna go anyway. I can go lez it up with all my adorable dykealicious friends for a weekend. Hot tubs and cocktails and cute girls, oh my.

What kind of cocktail should I make tonight?

*** A quick edit to say that a) I made mojitos and b) after mentioning offhand in a conversation to my (revoltingly wealthy and still smitten) ex today at work that I can't buy Madonna tickets till Saturday, when they will probably all be sold out, that big lug went and BOUGHT two tickets for me. And not the $75, general admission ones -- the high-roller, $375 ones. It just made my day. Squee!!!!

Time flies when you're old and busy. Shit.

Work has been, of course, ridiculous. I have worked the last three weekends in one capacity or another, and it's getting really old. Last month I was on hematology and became the newest Bone Marrow Queen, shattering records for number of bone marrows performed and signed out in a five day period. I DO NOT LIKE performing bone marrows. Huge needles, lots of needles, squirming patients, an excruciatingly painful procedure. No thanks. Unfortunately I have to perform 5 to be board-eligible. I prefer my patients dead, when I can't fuck them up. I was trying to infiltrate lidocaine into the periosteum of this guy's iliac crest, and was hitting the bone in a 360 circle around the area where I was going to biopsy, like you're supposed to. When I aimed cephalad, though, the needle just...... kept going. There should have been bone there, but wasn't. WTF??? Was it some weird anatomical variation? Was I perforating his sigmoid colon and/or left kidney with my six-inch spinal needle? It was just horrifying. And, of course, he was anticoagulated, and so was bleeding like a stuck pig everywhere, and made me worry that my biopsies were going to be shit after all this effort because they would be diluted with peripheral blood (which makes accurately interpreting a bone marrow biopsy impossible). Amazingly? They were fine. And so was the patient. And so was I.

I love Halloween. I went as a pregnant white trash battered wife, which I realize is horribly un-politically correct, but it was more amusing at the party when everyone thought I was Britney Spears. The boy went in a dirty, cum-stained (yes, for real) wife beater and basketball shorts, and we proudly sported fake hickeys, bruises, claw marks, bite marks, and bloody noses from our domestic scuffle. Turned out pretty good. I don't have a picture of the piece de resistance, which was the super tight pink t-shirt with the huge gold print that said "MO MONEY MO SEXY", which was $4.99 at the ghetto store. I don't know what that means.

The best part is, some people thought I was ACTUALLY pregnant.



My babies are at the vet right now, getting their teeth cleaned. I worry about them.


The boy and I went to Chicago last month. It was so so so so so nice to be home, and see my old friends and old stomping grounds. We went to have overpriced cocktails on the top of the John Hancock building at dusk, at which point the boy produced a spectacular Cartier diamond ring. Unfortunately, it was too big. When we took it back to the Cartier in Phoenix to order the right size, I found another ring that was even more spectacular (and much more expensive, accordingly, natch). Because the boy is a keeper, he bought that one once he saw the look of rapture on my face. And who knew? When you buy a diamond ring from Cartier, they break upon champagne for you in the store. We drank the whole bottle in fifteen minutes, because we are classy; yes, we are. Especially post-diamond spree, as we eat soup and Taco Bell, because we are poor.

Oh, and yay! I got a job! More specifically, a real, long-term job for when I finish my residency. No more fretting about fellowships. I will be on a partnership track after only one year. The money is fantastic. The other doctors are ridiculously nice, and they're all D.O.s, which is the icing on top. The relief is monstrous, it feels like the hugest weight is off my shoulders. Now, I just need to finish my MBA (9 more months) and take my pathology boards (which, incidentally, cost $2200 and are only given in Tampa, Florida [WTF?]) and I'll be ready to roll.

Secret's Vanilla Chai scented deodorant smells like ass. I should have known it was a bad idea.

Well, I guess it has been a little while since I waxed rhapsodic about my random day-to-day activities. It's been a fucking busy couple of months, like ridiculous. My last week of call was the single most atrocious week I've ever had. Thirteen hours on Saturday, which included not one, but two autopsies, one fetus and one adult. The adult was just fat as hell and came with a big can of Aqua Net in a plastic bag. I'm still not sure what that was all about.

Banged out half a dozen autopsies in the last week and a half alone. A couple dead babies. One of them had been dead in utero for at least a week - not pleasant. Like, full on disintegrating. I went to cut into its little skull and all the brain matter was just liquefied and proceeded to ooze all over the table. One of the adults is probably going to end up a legal issue, which sucks. Basically, he dropped dead in the hospital and no one knew why. When I got in there, the pneumonia was so nasty there was pus oozing out of the airways in the lungs when I cut them. Huh? I mean, you'd think he would have been one ill motherfucker. Who knows.

Our new residents started July 1. One is a doofus. Nice guy, but goofy. The other is Mormon, which really concerned me off the bat. Our residents and attendings belch and cuss and talk shit about religion constantly. Basically, it's the most unprofessional group of people you've ever seen. So I was concerned about the Mormon with his four kids. Anyway, I'm training him on autopsy this month so I'm spending a lot of time with him. He is ridiculously sexy, as sexy as a Mormon can be, and I found out he has a quiet love for punk rock, like he saw Minor Threat way back in the day and loves NOFX and all that shit. As he's loosening up, he's letting some dry humor come out, and he is fucking brilliant. Physically, he's my type (minus the tattoos) -- darker skinned, buzzed dark hair, blue eyes, nice lips, stocky body with a little gut, tall, round ass that looks very hot in scrubs that I could just sink my teeth into. So yeah, it's been fun. I flirt with him hard, and he likes it. Obviously, nothing would or will ever happen, as I adore my boy and, duh, he's Mormon and married, but sometimes all it takes is a good fantasy to get the motor running. I keep thinking about what it would be like to get him drunk.

I think I have an ulcer, which has made me lose almost 15 pounds. It kind of hurts, but the weight loss is real nice. I'm terrible.

The time has come for me to think about applying for fellowships, which are one-year subspecialty training programs. I think I'm going to aim high and apply for dermatopathology. You never know unless you try, right? And I have some sweet connections which may be helpful. Dermpath docs make the most ridiculous bank, and it's very 9-5, little to no call, no autopsies.

The boy's birthday is Monday and I rented one of those fancy Hertz Mustangs for him tomorrow, but he doesn't know it... I'm going to have to swing it somehow to go pick it up and surprise him with it. Should be good.....

Kisses to all. I wish I could show some of my sweet dead baby autopsy photos, but that's kind of wrong.

Chowed down on some delish soul food this morning, as much as a vegetarian can. The waffles are just to die for. Literally and figuratively, I presume.

Send my estranged mother a Mother's Day card, which went over like a load of bricks, and got an extremely nasty typed snippy little letter back. Who the hell cares. I'm so done wasting my energy on that situation.

This has been a busy month. The department has had some beautiful specimens. I had a total colectomy the other day, which is fine, but seeing as it's four to five feet long, it's difficult to move around and won't even fit on my cutting board. We've had a couple jaws for cancer, which is just icky. I'm on call this weekend, which always sucks, mostly because I can't really get my drink on satisfactorily.

So, instead, I shop like a fiend when on call. This weekend was no exception. Got this adorable vintage summery sundress yesterday for $18. Found my all-time favorite bra, which I thought was discontinued, and on sale. Got some new monster platform shoes, so I can trip and fall in them too.

The Modest Mouse show went well last weekend. Got a nice picture of me and Johnny Marr, which makes me look like a grossly obese Amazon woman, since he is so slight and short. Maybe I will post it if and when I have the energy to wrestle with SG's fantastic picture posting capabilities.

Speaking of wrestling with computers, fucking Excel is going to KILL me faster than any waffles fried in lard. One of my MBA classes is pretty much all Excel all the time and I'm suspecting that they expect you to have a certain level of experience with it -- which I totally don't have. So I'm meddling through, alternating angry with occasional victory once I happen to figure something out.

Sunday nights are good: Simpsons, Family Guy. Now I'm listening to the Doors, which I am (and have always been) obsessed with, and searching for a cute nautical themed charm bracelet on line. The Sailor Jerry website has a really cute anchor necklace, but it's $45, kind of pricey. We'll see.

So I totally bit it whilst attempting to walk in long jeans and VERY tall platform shoes. The jeans were brand new and I split the knee when I fell and bruised and scraped the hell out of my leg. If this wasn't bad enough, said incident occurred in the parking lot of one of the crappiest titty bars in town, 10 pm Saturday night, in front of a whole crowd of fuckwits.

Yeah.

I love that that place shares a building with Planned Parenthood. It kills me every time I see it.

Jewelry I am lusting after:



I love the juxtaposition of girlie-girl and hardass. Hence my obsession with hand grenades, I guess. I love my grenade tattoos and sometimes wish they were more visible (but most of the time I realize it's for the best). I'll have to get a picture sometime.

Yesterday was a Xanax day. It's complicated and there were actually multiple inciting events. The main one was some doctor in the ICU telling me that I wasn't a "real doctor". Not sure if he was referring to the D.O. or the pathology thing, but I was en feugo regardless and snapped back some bitchy comment while the nurses looked on, waiting for the explosion.

Today was just as busy, but not hideous. I made delicious falafel from scratch last night and had some in a wonderful vegan salad for lunch today, but ruined it all with a piece of weird cafeteria white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. And I really don't like white chocolate. Who the hell knows.

My asshole coworker was all snotty and rude to me a few days ago when she thought she got a diagnosis correct on this weird skin lesion, but I have since found out that I was the one who was, in fact, correct. So she can suck it.

On call this upcoming weekend............. joy.

Oy vey. What a crazy month. I have been a veritable autopsy MACHINE. Hack hack hack hack. And a couple of them were actually pretty cool cases -- widely metastatic anaplastic thyroid cancer in a lady who had radiation therapy for it and then later developed squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx. Now I'm looking at all these tumor nodules from her lungs and liver and having a hard time telling which cancer has metastasized where! Pretty wild. And I'm getting faster and better with dissection too. Practice makes perfect!

My boy got us these killer sterling silver his-and-hers skull rings for Valentine's Day:


They are super cute. My main complaint is that the little prongs on the crown get caught on everything. Wah, wah, poor me! Anyway the rings are heavy, solid, great quality sterling silver -- very nice. May have to get some more pieces from the same artist. I just love good heavy sterling jewelry.

I got the boy this Paiste cymbal he wanted for V-Day. We went to the little pizza place downtown and drank lots of wine. Everyone was happy, but the true happy ending could not be had because he got his VASECTOMY the Friday before. Whee! It was very quick, painless, easy -- the Xanax I gave him beforehand was a good move. We're two weeks out now and I think the balls still hurt somewhat. He played a show last Saturday though and seemed to do OK. And the show was fucking awesome.

Not much else. Trying not to throttle my self-centered asshole coworker. Sludging through the MBA. Enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Fuck. I guess it's been a while since an update, mmm yeah thanks for the reminder, you know who. I got pissed off at the photo situation, and it's really not as much fun without them.

Work has been the same old, same old, but my last class in the MBA -- accounting -- absolutely sucked ass. Waaaaay too time consuming. And really, nothing could be less interesting. Really.

Anyway, yeah, about work. Let me think. Cool stories. Hmm. A couple of 70 pound pannuses... panni? Not sure. A 12-pound uterus (lots of leiomyomata). I had not one, but TWO baby autopsies last time I was on call, which realy chapped my ass. I'm back on hematology this month, which really bores me to tears. And our hematopathologist can be a royal dick. It doesn't make for the most fun and exciting experience.

I had the world's most wicked and drug-resistant migraine a couple weeks ago. It would NOT go away. One of my attendings basically dragged me to the ED, where they pumped me so full of Dilaudid I practically forgot my name, even though the headache was still there. They popped my CT scan cherry, which I actually reviewed today. Word of advice: looking at your own brain is WAY BEYOND CREEPY. Who knew? Anyway, I went to a neurologist who specializes in headaches who drugged me up good with triptans, Midrin, and Fiorcet and I am happy now. She did say that exercising a few days a week has been shown to dramatically reduce migraines, and even though I rarely get them, I'm traumatized enough to where I've actually dragged my ass to the gym pretty much every day. Hi, muscles, old friends. Haven't seen you in a while.

What else. It's been fucking cold. My pipes froze three nights in a row. Oh yeah, I live in Phoenix. The boy is away for 10 full days at a trade show, from which he called me whimpering today about puking from his hangover, and actually asking what he should do. Wah.

Oh, damn. The pasta is undercooked.


** A wee little edit to say that I reread this the day after I wrote it, and my, was I all full of cat shit or what!