Halloween

Halloween

Man, is it a scary time of year.

Not only are the Christmas decorations up at the shops to get you in the mood (way too early, if you ask me…), but all over the TV the only thing you see are images of Frankenstein, the village idiot, a lawyer, and the Living Dead.

You thought I meant Halloween? No – I was talking about the Presidential election with Kerry, Bush, Edwards and Cheney!

This is my oh-so-subtle way to remind all of you to get out to the polls on Tuesday and vote. While I do have a preference as to who wins (I won’t say who, ‘cause I’ll alienate either my mom or my dad), I’m really more interested in getting as many people to the polls as possible. Remember, you can’t complain if you don’t vote!

Speaking of complaining (King of the Segue, I tells ya), Daylight Savings stinks. OK, it’s a good idea; it helps the farmers and keeps the trains on time – but we change our clocks this weekend, which is a little later than usual (Note to Mom: the time change is now 3.5 hours and carry the ‘one’ with a change of the sign, multiplied by the tangent of……. On second thought, I’ll call you.). So this morning, 2 days before the time change, the sun rose over Adelaide at 5:15am. Which would be fine, if I wasn’t so light sensitive. Meaning, a nightlight has the ability to keep me up. While rising with the sun has some rather noble aspects to it – you know, making hay while the sun shines and all – it really makes it hard to sleep after being up until the early hours of the AM studying for exams…

And speaking of exams (Two segues in one email!), I am happy to announce the Second Annual Make Bryan Dinner competition. Like last year, entry is free and open to everyone – I have enough raffle tickets for all of you. The grand prize is to make Bryan dinner while he studies for exams – of course, the winner has to provide airfare, accommodation, transfers, and groceries – but I have plenty of cookware that you can use, and I’ll even dust off a bottle of wine from my cellar!

Somehow, I don’t think I will have any more takers this year than last year…

Today for my peds performance review, I had to do a CSA; a Clinical Skills Assessment. It’s where a senior doctor observes as you do a history and exam on a real-live patient. (Hopefully live; it’s a little hard to get a history from a patient in the morgue. But I digress.) I’ve done a bunch of these this year, but today was the first one on a kid. Which would have been ok, had I done any work thus far with anyone over the age of 3 weeks or under the age of 65 years. I mean, I have successfully made it to the end of my 6th week of peds and haven’t even touched a toddler – a pretty good average, if you ask me. I passed the CSA but I think things will change next week – I start my 2 weeks of inpatients on Monday, where I’ll be dealing with lots of sick kiddies every day.

Again, pray for me.

And with that, it’s the weekend. With exams starting three weeks from Saturday, I’ll spend my time on Saturday with the study group, and Sunday huddled up with a good textbook. Not to mention trying to figure out the time difference – was it carry the one or multiply by 4…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan