Monday, November 28, 2005
I'm still here--
but not blogging much lately since I have a lot of little projects on my plate--and things are backing up a bit.
Since surgery lab ended, I've been catching up on petitions and applications for off-campus clinical rotations for the upcoming (yay!) fourth year, had a research project for ecotoxicology class, have been trying to work on a publishable version of my research from a couple summers ago, and keeping up with weekly pet columns. On top of all this, I'm trying to keep up with studying--it's easy to fall behind in classes that only have a mid-term and a final.
And the cherry on top is that I must maintain my humanity and sanity with all of this. I took some time before Thanksgiving week to design a little cartoon for the emergency medicine club t-shirt--we'll see if it gets picked--but it was fun to work on nonetheless. I'm also still with the guitar lessons--again, necessary. . . to . . .maintain . . .sanity. . .
Diggerblue and I took a mini-vacation this week in lieu of the ususal family gatherings (sorry, fam) since we'll get to see them over winter break and haven't had a trip alone in years. We headed down to
Giant City State Park and hiked and ate Thanksgiving lunch at the lodge (he ate a huge pile of fried chicken and had a cigar for dessert, I had lotsa dumplings, pumpkin pie and Irish coffee) and played checkers in front of the fire and the stuffed buffalo in the
lodge's great room.
We whined about the poor manners of kids (and parents) these days and argued about whether my
geekiness cancels out my
sexiness, enhances it, or if they are two separate things altogether. (guess which side I took?) We also wondered aloud whether we're more like a hot young thirtysomething honeymoon couple or a crotchety old fart couple when we take these little vacations together.
And I discovered and absolutely wonderful book that is a super-fast and enjoyable read--
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, the author of
Angela's Ashes.
And on our hikes we saw hawks and turkey vultures circling overhead and accidentally startled a blue heron out of a pond. But dammit--I left my camera at home!
All in all, it was a good vacation, except for the notion of "all the work I could be catching up on" looming over my head most of the week.
Anyway, I highly suggest the
Giant City Lodge for an affordable, earthy yet comfortable retreat.
Now it's way past my bedtime and I still have a crapload of work to catch up on. And I'm getting a bit of a sore throat.
It was SO worth it.
