Post-Call Bliss

On one of D’s recent post-call days, he decided to take a break from studying and we ventured out to explore this wonderful city in which we live.

First stop: the Cloisters.  Last summer while on a road trip with my brother, we listened to the History of the World in 100 Objects from the British Museum.  One of the objects were the Lewis Chessmen, discovered on the Isle of Lewis off of Scotland in 1831.  They are currently on loan to the Met and are on display at the Cloisters.  I was pretty darn excited to see these, especially given that I don’t even know how to play chess.

Second stop: Well, we did come back to our apartment for an early dinner and some reading before we headed off to our

Third stop:  Avenue Q!  The ridiculous musical with very inappropriate puppets!  It was fantastic.  The subway gods were lookin’ out for us and we arrived plenty early to the theatre, so after picking up our tickets we found a cute little market where we shared coffee and a cupcake.

I can tell the future

I don’t think I’ve yet shared on here that D secured a cardio-thoracic spot at his current program for fellowship This is great news because (from what he’s told me) this is a really competitive fellowship field.  Also, the man in charge of his program and his soon-to-be wife are both amazing.  We talked about this a bit before he expressed interest because eventually we want to end up on the West Coast (California!) but he wants to follow that up with what he assures me is a much easier fellowship to secure.  So, here’s hoping that next year that will prove true and he’ll interview and be accepted at a place out west that will lead to real employment.

Two and a half years left in NYC.  I hope all of our friends and family come to visit!

 

I’m back! And, Happy New Year!

Sorry for the long break…I was hibernating. In fact, I probably still am as everyone knows that here in the northern hemisphere, January and February are the most miserable months of the year and should be avoided at all costs.

I hope that everyone had a great holiday season. I know I did. Mine was pretty wine-infused, given that D & I were in California. We’ve been really lucky – in the 3 holiday seasons we’ve been together, D has been able to get either the week before or the week after Christmas off. And, he’s traveled to California with me each year. (I think just in the past couple of weeks has D’s mom realized our yearly journeys to California are not just a selfish undertaking because I have tons of family there! And who doesn’t want to escape cold and snowy at Christmas).

So last weekend one of D’s friends from med school days was in New York interviewing. He met up with us at an adorable (and delicious!) Italian restaurant in an area that I believed was devoid of quality restaurants – the Penn Station area. Anyway, he had just come from visiting an undergrad friend from our home state who has made it big chronicling parties and such around Manhattan. And while I thought I would be intrigued by this, I just found it to all be so vapid. I came to the realization that I am undoubtedly not a social climber.

On a different note, I stopped by one of the library branches post-volunteering today and checked out a super-exciting book on statistics to brush up for the follow-up on a position to which I applied. I suppose it’s a good thing I have no to desire to become somebody in this city because I’d bore them with my t distributions and all.

Harvest

Sorry for the recent radio silence.  I’ve been busy driving one of these around.  While I know many people these days can simultaneously tweet, blog, facebook, and harvest, the few times I attempted to send text messages I instantly veered off course.

My parents own a farm where I was incredibly lucky to grow up.  In addition to having a near endless playground, I also was able to work outside and alongside my parents from a very young age.  I drove my first full size tractor at the age of 12. I remember being terrified that I would encounter a cop on my first excursion, as I was two years to young for a school permit and nowhere near full license age.

My parents both work off of the farm, too.  My entire childhood my father had no (paid) job off farm, but he developed quite the social streak late in life and when a good opportunity to work with others materialized he jumped on it.  This has resulted in him being extra anxious when planting and harvest roll around every year.

I love the farm and especially love harvest.  If it weren’t for the winters and lack of international airport, I would happily live on there. So, when he asked if I might be willing to come back to harvest, I did not hesitate to book my plane ticket.  My still jobless state combined with D’s recent ridiculous schedule made this the perfect opportunity. I spent quality time with my parents, ate s’mores, visited my in-laws (parents, sister, and grandmother), got to be in the country at one of my favorite times of the year, sampled every version of a pumpkin spice latte that our nearby big town has to offer, and best of all we finished soybean harvest right before I flew back.

 

Happiness

The other day I was laying on a sun-warmed rock in Central Park and realized, as I do several times a day, that despite my recent anxiety over feeling like I am living an aimless life (other than supporting D), I really have a pretty great life.

Rather than complaining about things I am unhappy about (crowded subways, my dwindling bank account) it’s time to start sharing things that make me happy.  Both on here and with my family and friends.  Here is list one.

1. Saxophone players on otherwise deserted wooded paths in Central Park

2. College football season

3.  Liege waffles (the best place I know to get these outside of Belgium is a food truck called Wafels and Dinges here in NYC.  There are several stable locations, including one at the southeast corner of Central Park).

4. Seasonal coffee drinks.  I love pumpkin spice lattes and the most exciting time of the year for me is the arrival of eggnog lattes.  I’m a little obsessed.

5.  Fireflies.  They’re a little out of season, but I love the thought of them year round.

 

Pretty Girl

I was volunteering the other week and came across this pretty statue along the Hudson River.

I need to start carrying a real camera with me on my explorations of the city.  There are so many wonderful pieces of art, architectural details and interesting people that I would love to capture and share.

Motivation

Yesterday morning, I caught the subway to Central Park.  There I met up with a large group of women all gathered for a Sunday morning running group sponsored by a local store.  I’ve long wanted to be a part of a running group, but I guess I keep waiting for ideal circumstances i.e. I walk a block or two from my home to the meeting point.  That’s highly unlikely to happen.  I have been tracking a number of running groups that meet in Central Park but had yet to go to one.  Normally they are pretty early in the morning, but this one started at 10 am and the stars aligned so that it fell a few hours after D left for one of his 24 hour calls.

I’ve been a runner my whole life.  I ran track in high school and jumped into lengthier running in college, running 5-10k’s regularly, as well as one half marathon and two fulls.  However, since moving to NYC I’ve been very lazy about running.  There is a little track very close to our apartment and another large park nearby that I have heard hosts many cross-country races, but I’ve yet to make it to the running club that meets there.  I did try one time, but by the time I located our car in the garage and drove over to the listed meeting place, it was a minute after the start time and no one was there.  Plus, I was still in the car with no available parking spots in sight.

So I found this run a few weeks ago and signed up.  The organizers split the group into three groups: beginners, intermediate, and advanced.  I was planning on going with the intermediate group due to my recent non-running status, but they were breaking us up by pace, with the intermediate falling between 10-11 minutes.  That’s a little slower than I normally run, so I went with the advanced group (8-9 minute miles).  The only problem was this group was running 5 miles, something I haven’t done in…well, I really can’t remember when I last ran more than 3 miles and that was a one time occurrence months ago.  But I decided a running group was a perfect opportunity to push myself, especially since I could always wimp out and meet back at the pre-designated stretching spot.  I was in so much pain the last mile (side stitch), but I finished the 5+ mile run was so happy to have pushed myself.

I’m definitely hoping to go back, or maybe explore again closer running group options.  And, I got on the New York Road Runners site to look for races.  Winter is definitely not high time for races, but I’ll keep looking.

 

Today a stranger sat on my lap

Really.

I was on the subway today, completely engrossed in my book, when I heard a woman say “I’m just going to squeeze in.” I looked up and realized she was heading right at my lap.  It was sooo weird.  I mean, she didn’t actually end up on my lap, more like my leg.

If any of you are familiar with the numbered New York subway cars, the middle benches have bars that roughly separate them into 3 and 4 seater blocks.  I was on one of the 3 seater sides, with two far from lithe people also on my side.  I had been leaning all the way back into the bench so she was able to squish herself onto the edge, forcing a third of my butt behind the separator bar and requiring me to wrap one leg over the other.

When we reached the next stop and a number of people on the opposite bench got off the subway, she gave no indication of moving.  So I poked her in the shoulder (she was engrossed in a conversation with her friend sitting across the way) because I literally was trapped behind her, having maybe 5 inches in front of me that weren’t blocked by either her body of the bar.  She shot me a dirty look and with great disdain asked why I was bothering her.  When I explained that she was essentially sitting on me and squishing me and that I would like to move to the wide open seats, she sighed and and shifted so I could get out.

I understand that NYC is crowded, but this was ridiculous.  Worse yet, she only rode three stops before getting off.

I took a picture of this absurdity (or at least the bench once I had evacuated) to share here, with my husband, and really anyone else I could get to listen to me, but apparently my phone did not like it and it has disappeared.

And the rest of my ride, I was leaning forward, legs sprawled wide, staking on my share of the bench.

Bookish

The past two years, the closest thing I’ve had to a New Year’s resolution is to read a book for each week in the year…I haven’t set any stipulation on actually reading one book each week, just 52 books in the entire year.  In 2010, I only made it to 29.  I suppose had I actually reached 52, I might not have made the same resolution. 2011 got off to a very slow start.  I suppose wedding planning might have had something to do with that.

But this month, my reading has really taken off.  My recent acquisition of my NY public library card definitely helped, as did my new found love of my Kindle.  I knocked off 8 in September and have four more in progress, but I’ll really have to pack them in over the next three months if I want to hit 52.  Meeting this number is not something I am going to force myself to do.  And that’s probably the reason why I wasn’t the least bit upset to not meet my goal in 2010.  I just love reading too much to make myself unhappy about it.  Last night, I giddily browsed NYPL’s Kindle offerings, happily checking out books, or more often, adding them to my holds, as most already had substantial waiting lists.  I was disappointed when the system cut me off at 12 Kindle holds, but I’ll survive.

My top reads thus far in 2011 are Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks, A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, Bossypants by Tina Fey (my first Kindle read – the picture on the cover was too terrifying for me to pick up the actual book), and At Home by Bill Bryson.

Do you have any favorite books?  I always love being introduced to new authors, especially when they have vast bibliographies.  I’m looking at you, Alexander McCall Smith.  I was a fairly early convert to AMS.  If you haven’t read him yet he has several series, of which The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency are probably the best known.  I recommend picking up the first of any of his series, asap. They are easy reads but entertaining and very well written. My favorite AMS memory is of a trip I took with my Mom to Scotland.  We’d spent a day sightseeing but when it deteriorated to a grey rainy evening, we decided to go scotch tasting. It was a disaster (not that my Mom and I got trashed and stumbled around Edinburgh, though that would have been entertaining; we just sipped two different kinds and realized we both hate scotch), so we went to a bookstore, picked up an Alexander McCall Smith book each, and retired to our warm and cozy to drink tea instead.  It was a glorious evening.

 

Post Call Cubicle

D started an ICU rotation yesterday and jumped right in with a 24 hour call.  This is a really brutal schedule – call day, post call day, day of rounds, repeat.  Unlike other overnight calls, this one is known to afford very little time for rest at the hospital.  Sure enough, D arrived home a little after 7 this morning, looking awful having gotten no rest.

My general game plan is to be up and about to head out on his post call days.  We live in a studio, and understandably, he needs total silence to sleep.  Typing and the turning of book pages have both been deemed too disruptive in the past.  However, this morning my plan of providing him with an empty apartment was ruined as the abdominal pains I went to bed with last night failed to disappear overnight, as I had hoped. The last thing I wanted was to have what is now a minor annoyance to turn into crippling pain or nausea in the middle of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a 45 minute subway ride from home.  So, basically, I have one option for maintaining quiet and staying home: the bathroom.  I’ve been holed up for over an hour now, daydreaming of the July when we’ll be able to trade up to something a little more spacious.  Even a one bedroom would feel palatial at this point.