Ben Blog

All Things Ben

2011-07-23T03:14:00.008-04:00

lying dead near the Grassy Knoll

Or at least several.

So I live in Las Vegas now. Technically it's Henderson, but you know how that goes. I started PA (Physician Assistant) school just over two weeks ago. So far I like it--good classmates, good teachers for the most part, so you know, good times. If you want more information, here are some questions I could imagine someone asking me if I were to, you know, speak with that person. I also provide the answers to said questions.

What is a PA?
Perhaps Wikipedia said it best: "A Physician Assistant is a healthcare provider licensed and trained to practice medicine with limited supervision of a physician." Chew on that. Literally.

Where do you live?
In a house. I rent a bedroom in a three-bedroom mini-house about eight miles SW of the school. The commute takes about 15 minutes. The owner is finishing up his graduate degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. The other roommate is a pilot and gone every other week for work...or so he says.

Do you have any pets?
No.

Does your landlord have Netflix streaming?
Yes. This is convenient because I started watching LOST in late May, and I now have eight episodes left in the final season. Recently I've watched one episode per day while eating dinner. I may even tell you what I think about the series sometime in the future. Recommendations for other tv shows to watch when I'm done will not be rejected outright.

So you spend most of your time watching tv?
Pretty much. Actually I go to school for about eight hours a day. We have about four hours of class most days, and then there's a bunch of studying to do. I treat it about like a full-time job so far, but I'm pretty sure some of my classmates study substantially more than I do.


cookies

So what are they teaching you over at that silly school of yours? And what's it called again? UNLV?
Actually it's called Touro University-Nevada. Not surprisingly, no one has ever heard of it unless they're into the whole "health professional school" scene. So far this semester we're taking Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Radiology, and a couple of fluff classes (that are actually important, just don't require studying like the others). A few other classes start later in the semester. It seems like this first semester is basically the first year of med school, whittled and compressed into 3.5 months. Which makes sense.

How long is the program?
28 months: 16 didactic (i.e. classroom), and 12 on clinical rotations.

So wait, I'm confused, whatever happened to podiatry school?
I took a leave of absence in December 2009, partway through my fourth year, and eventually decided to attend PA school.

Weren't you almost done? Why didn't you just finish?
I was pretty close to graduating, but overall it's a seven-year process if you include a typical residency. So I was about half-way through the full process of becoming an independently practicing podiatrist. If I was gonna jump ship and switch careers, that was actually a pretty good time to do it...at least compared to later.

Is it really that simple?
No.

What's one thing that attracted you to becoming a PA?
PA's can work in just about any specialty, and even switch midstream. Docs can't do that.

Do you currently own a guitar?
Technically, yes, but it's in Missouri (and pretty crappy). Luckily I have a much nicer one with me that I don't own, compliments of a generous friend.

Do you consider blogger user-friendly?
No, it's ridiculous, especially arranging photos.

What have you been doing since December 2009?


Elena and Abigail, probably May 2010

First I moved to Missouri and honed my skills at being as unproductive as possible, for about three months. Then I moved to Dallas (April 2010) (taking a circuitous route through Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana to visit friends) just in time for the birth of my cute twin nieces Elena and Abigail. Actually I got there the day after they were born. Shortly thereafter I spent two weeks digging ditches in "Texas clay" (the dirt in Texas is like clay) to help Mark and Sarah (my brother and SIL who were living in Dallas at the time, and the parents of the aforementioned twin baby girls) install sprinklers in their front yard. About a month after that I performed surgery on my own big toe. Another month or so later (July 2010) I finalized my decision to apply to PA school, and started the process. Six months after that (early Feb 2011), I got accepted to Touro. In the meantime I traveled to Phoenix for about six weeks (Sep-Oct) to finalize my affairs at Podiatry school once and for all. In November (2010) I started working as a tutor (for all subjects...I'm only partially kidding) and music teacher. In December I started substitute teaching as well, which I did until June 1st of this year. In May I went to Utah for a family reunion and started watching LOST. In June I left Dallas after a bit more than a year of living there, spent two weeks in Phoenix (on the way), and came to Las Vegas.

Do you really think I got all the way to the end of this post?
This isn't the end.

Have you seen any good movies lately?
No.

Have you seen any movies lately, period?
No. Did I mention I've watched 112 episodes of LOST in the past two months?

What about Harry Potty and Deathly Hallows part five???!?
Plenty of time for that later...that's my usual approach to movie theaters...don't go.

Did you really see a car burn up in your parking lot last month?
Yes.

I know this is changing the subject, but doesn't the title "Physician Assistant" make you sound menial? People probably get you confused with Medical Assistants, right?
Yes, it's misleading. From what I've heard, some early PA's wanted to call it "Physician Associate", which is a better title, but they had to grovel before influential organizations to gain acceptance. Now it would be expensive and impractical to change the name.

Don't you feel like this post is bit lengthy?
Yeah, so what. Actually, it's probably shorter in total word count than several others I've written.

Are you schizophrenic? Why are you conversing with yourself?
I heard in lecture yesterday that 1/100 people become schizophrenic at some point. Which is probably not true. But if them, why not me?


Me at the Alamo in June. Remember it.

What do you now consider your favorite band?
That's easy, The Beatles. But Led Zeppelin is extremely awesome, in case you weren't aware. Here's proof.

Have you made any friends in Nevada?
About five. Actually, I have some pretty cool classmates who've been fun to "hang out" with (mostly meaning studying and attending lectures), and the people in my singles ward have been friendly and welcoming, though I haven't been around them that much yet. Plus a friend from college lives down here, and she invited me over for bbq pulled pork last Sunday. Afterwards we jammed on the ukulele.

You play the ukulele?
Yes, of course I play the ukulele. And by that I mean I've learned about six chords on two separate occasions in the past month.

Have you done any dating recently?
Yes.

Care to elaborate?
No.

What else have you accomplished in the past few months?
Learned some Beatles songs on the guitar. Also started recording some music in Dallas before moving. I studied Italian for a month or so and became very mildly conversant. Ate a lot of cookies in June. In addition, I slept on a random guy's couch in Albuquerque.

What's your BMI (Body Mass Index)?
26.2

Does that make you part of the growing obesity epidemic?
No, I'm just in the "overweight" range, so take it easy.

the Jake Erickson tribute album (one song so far)

2011-04-28T02:45:00.000-04:00

Below I play a version of "Winter", a song written by Jake Erickson in 2004, which also appears as the 12th track on the album Jake and I released in 2006. For various reasons*, the album version didn't turn out quite as we wanted, but I've always liked the song. Consider this** a tribute to an under-appreciated modern artist. Perhaps other artists will join in the effort so we can make it a full album. :)

*All our recording was done with very limited time and money, and no prior experience. We barely knew what we were doing in there, did most songs in a single take (for each part), and yet certain things turned out really well. Others left something to be desired. Before we recorded Winter, I gave Jake some suggestions about how to sing the song that I think backfired and made it sound worse, and I've always felt a little bad about that. Having just re-listened to it, I can say it is not without merit. But I also think most of the live performances of the song Jake did were more satisfying than the studio version.

**Please excuse the poor framing of the video. Recording songs with a camera placed on a stack of books in a cramped bedroom is not an exact science.

PS: Stay tuned for the sharing of additional music, maybe even recorded with something other than my camera. I recently procured a decent-quality digital recorder, and I've begun to dabble. Now I just need a guitar that I don't hate...though I still use the hated one out of necessity.

Overdue Op Report

2011-04-17T23:56:00.002-04:00

Last June I did surgery on my own toe, at home. Sound ridiculous? Well it was. There's no getting around that fact. But it seemed justified at the time, and even sounded kind of fun.

Background

a few days post-injury

Six days earlier I smashed my left big toe with a door. It bled a little, and a few days later it was still painful and oozy. Further investigation (trimming the nail back) revealed the flesh underneath was red and raw, and a pretty classic example of what's called a "subungual hematoma” (That just means excess blood causing pressure under the nail). I'd experienced this once before, in 2004, when a basketball player landed on my toe—the same toe—with most of his weight. A few days later I visited a podiatrist who removed the nail, releasing the pressure and allowing proper healing.

With that experience under my belt, not to mention my podiatry training, I figured I pretty well knew how to handle the situation. So after observing the nail for a few more days, I decided it would be best to remove it completely. The nail was already somewhat loose, and the flesh underneath would heal better with it gone.

supply table

Now, removing a toenail is easy....if you have the proper supplies. That includes certain surgical instruments (which I had, since I'd purchased some during school) as well as local anesthesia (which I did NOT have, and couldn't think of any way to get), and appropriately-sized needles and syringes (didn't have any of those, either, but figured I could scrounge some up).

Obviously I could have gone to a podiatrist's office and let them do it for me. But suffice it to say that I was cheap (and my insurance wouldn't have covered anything), and feeling kind of adventurous. After all, it was right up my alley. And all I needed was a a little lidocaine (that's the local anesthetic), and I'd be good to go!

But where could I get lidocaine, other than the black market? And where exactly is the black market? I would have been perfectly willing to buy some there, had someone provided the location.

A breakthrough

the O.R.

The problem of my absent anesthetic was solved when I read online that in the case of a drug allergy to lidocaine, an injection of diphenhydramine (aka benadryl) can be used in its place to provide anesthesia. Um....really??

By the way, this is really bizarre because, as you probably know, benadryl is an antihistamine that's typically used by people with seasonal allergies, or as a sleep aide. I'd certainly never heard of its being injected to produce anesthesia, and neither had my podiatry classmates (now in residency) that I subsequently mentioned it to.

Preparation

Supplies!

Even with this breakthrough, getting supplies was trickier than I expected. Benadryl abounds, but not in an injectable form. I hypothesized that I could buy it in pill form, crush the pills in my handy mortar and pestle (which didn't exist), dissolve the powder in some water, and then inject that solution. (This was a stupid idea for various reasons, but we'll get into that later).

So I bought some benadryl tablets. The only needles and syringes I could find were single-use, 1ml (small!) insulin syringes with 29 gauge (tiny!) needles attached, sold in a box of 100. These were not at all ideal, but better than nothing....actually even that's debatable. I also picked up some distilled water and alcohol swabs to further furnish my operating room.

The Operation

The day had come, and it was kind of invigorating. I was less invigorated when I realized that my crushed pills didn’t stay dissolved in the distilled water, instead settling to the bottom of whatever container they occupied. As a result, it was nearly impossible to draw the mixture up into those insulin syringes before the diphen resettled to the bottom. (Not to mention it's nearly impossible to draw anything up into such small-gauge needles! A 25 gauge needle is typical for such activities.) It was equally challenging to actually inject the solution into my toe, due to both the settling and the smallness of the needles, which kept getting clogged by tiny pill particles. Even when I did successfully inject fluid, some of it wasn’t as concentrated as it needed to be, due to the settling problems I mentioned. So in case you hadn't gotten the message, that part was difficult. But after a couple hours of finagling, most of my toe was numb, and I was ready for the fun part.

And it would have been pretty fun. Except that despite my best efforts, one edge of the nail bed still had sensation. I loosed the nail and separated it from the bed for the most part...but it was too painful to separate it on the edge that wasn't numb. So I eventually yanked it off without having separated it 100%, and ripped off a chunk of flesh with it for good measure. Yes, it was quite painful. If you're having trouble relating to the experience, imagine sticking a butter knife under a small toenail to pry it up, only not being able to do so completely because it's too painful, and then ripping it off with pliers.

post-op

{Technical details: Injected ~10cc's of impure solution, variable and unknown concentration. Achieved numbness over 90% of surface area. Loosened majority of nail with an elevator (all except medial edge), extracted whole nail and some adhered tissue from nail bed with a hemostat, observing proximal "feathery" edge. Scraped proximal nail bed with currette to smooth and flatten, in hopes that the nail would grow back more smoothly and uniformly than it had since its prior avulsion in 2004. Applied generous triple antibiotic ointment, followed by somewhat-sterile dressing. Including application of anesthetic, op time ~3.5 hours.}

Aftermath

My toe was in a lot of pain that evening at the ward party, but I was very glad to be done with the surgery. My biggest concern on day one was infection--my technique had been anything but sterile. And for a couple days I thought I had one, due to a pattern of redness on and around the injection sites.

To make a long story (everything that happened after the surgery) fairly short, over the next few days I carefully assessed the spread and movement of the redness and ascertained that there was no infection, but only a local reaction of some sort to the various impurities I had injected along with the benadryl—read the ingredients in sleep aid pills sometime and imagine the possibilities. Redness, swelling, and pain remained for several days, which was worriesome. I nearly went to see a doctor. But after a couple weeks it improved enough that I was comfortable and functional once again. Gradual change continued and still does. Even now, over 10 months later, there lingers a mild degree of redness and puffiness around the nail, but it’s rarely painful. The main difference is that I have to trim the nail much more aggressively to avoid over-encroachment by the puffy skin around it, which otherwise results in pain, ingrown-toenail-like symptoms, and eventual ulceration (all of which are awesome).


tracking possible infection

Do I have any regrets in life? Yes. Do I regret surgerizing my toe? Maybe. The goods and ills are nearly a wash. One of the most important things I learned: If you're thinking about crushing up oral benadryl pills that contain a million ancillary ingredients using a non-existent mortar and pestle in order to inject the produced solution into your own toe using tiny insulin syringes...it may not be the best idea you've ever come up with (though it could possibly be in the top ten).

Can I get a larger slice of pie, please?

2010-12-05T22:32:00.010-05:00

I'm tired of college football. I've often been perturbed by it. But after an ugly series of events⁽¹⁾ during Thanksgiving weekend, which led my brother Nathaniel to suggest that he would now boycott college football, I couldn't help but agree with his rationale. It's just a mess. And we watch it for the wrong reasons.

The college football model is one of "haves" and "have-nots". Its motto is "Keep the little man down." Their idea, lately, is that an unfair system will lead to controversy, which will generate interest, which will boost ratings, which will lead to lucrative TV contracts and big advertising money. And it works.

There are some people who like the system because it gives their team an advantage. It's kind of like if you were born into the upper level of a rigid caste system and you thought, "Man, this caste system is awesome! I'll always be at the top!" Most people, on the other hand, realize the system is unfair, and wish for a change. But both groups have something in common: they watch the games. They may whine and complain about the injustices, but they still watch. And as a result, they feed the beast. They become part of those controversy-boosted ratings which generate huge profits.

Now, even though the college football model "works" (makes quite a bit of money), I believe they would make a lot more money if they switched to a playoff system⁽²⁾. So why don't they? I think there are two main reasons.

It's new. It would be a departure from their tried-and-tested model of controversy = ratings. So if you're already making billions of dollars with minimal effort, why change your approach? That's pretty understandable. The other reason is less so.
The people in charge want to maintain their larger slice of pie. Teams from the six BCS conferences get a lot more money than teams from the other five conferences, and a huge recruiting advantage, and they don't want that to change. They have "Bigger Slice of Pie Syndrome". It's a serious condition.

Those are the two major reasons why college football doesn't change. They don't want to try something new when their unfair system beautifully generates billions of dollars already. And the people in charge want to keep their larger pie slices.

To illustrate further, imagine yourself in a room. In front of you is a table, and one it are two iterations of your favorite kind of pie. Only, one of the pies is very large, and the other is small. In this room there also happen to be ten of your friends. Now you are given with two choices:

Option A: You can select the large pie, divide it into eleven equal slices (hard to do, by the way) and share it with all your friends. You are told, however, that if you do this, there's a 0.1% chance the pie will spontaneously combust, and you will be left with no pie. Also, you are warned that if you share the pie equally with your friends, they may become very powerful from the pie-nutrition (or "pietrition"). And who knows but that next time your friends will be the ones dividing the pie? Perhaps with their newfound pie-strength they will no longer fear you, and will give you a smaller slice. These seem like valid concerns to you.

Option B: You can select the small pie, cut a piece comprising 90% of it for yourself, and then leave the rest to be divided among your friends. You strongly consider doing this because, even though you'll actually be getting less pie, there's not that 0.1% chance of the pie spontaneously combusting. Gotta go with a sure thing, right? Plus, you can't have your friends getting pie-strength. Who knows what they can do with pie-strength? Pie-strength is a thing of legends.

So which do you choose? If you choose the first option, you're a reasonable person. If you choose the second, you're college football (and a hero to supporters of caste systems everywhere!).

And that's great and dandy that they're going to keep doing this, keep hogging pie and fearing new frontiers. I can't do very much about it. But starting today, no longer will I be part of the controversy-generated-ratings-boosting crowd of mindless followers. Starting today, I renounce college football^(3),(4). And you should too.

Join the movement.

**********

Footnotes:
1. Auburn somehow came back from a 21-0 deficit against Alabama, and Boise St. lost because their kicker choked twice. (Plus BYU lost to Utah, which is always a downer for humanity.) But more important than what these games meant for the race to the BCS title game, was how they begged the question: Why should we care? They were part of the fabricated drama, and part of our being drawn in, hopeful for the little guy to get a fair shot. Only, those hopes are dashed 99 times out of 100, because the cards are stacked against them.

2. A college football playoff system is easy to design, and there's no reason to believe it wouldn't generate a ridiculous amount of money. Though there are other reasonable methods, I think the best system would be a 16-team playoff including the conference champions from all eleven conferences, plus five other teams chosen by a committee. The first two rounds would be home games for the higher-seeded team, and the last two rounds (three games) would be played in high-profile bowl games. I assert that all arguments made against such a system are disingenuous attempts to preserve the current, unfair system.

3. The one exception to this will be watching my own team. I'm a fan of BYU, and I will continue to watch their games. But I won't be drawn in by the fabricated drama of the "national championship" chase. There's no such thing as a national championship in the BCS, so why should I care? And BYU's approach, starting next year, largely aligns with my perspective. When they decided to leave the Mountain West Conference and become independent, they knew this would actually decrease their chances of playing in a BCS game. But they didn't care. What they cared about was exposure, or in other words getting out of the crappy TV contracts of the MWC so their fans can watch games. And starting next year that will be a lot easier, with games on ESPN and BYUTV (instead of "mtn."). As a bonus, they will also make more money. Screw the BCS.

4. Admittedly, there are good reasons to "renounce" many other sports or leagues as well. NBA players make way too much money. Professional baseball is boring, and both the season and individual games are way too long. The NFL causes a lot of head injuries which lead to premature dementia. Plus it's played on Sunday, when it's better to be doing other things. And hockey isn't very fun to watch. So by all means, stop watching those other sports, too. I've hardly watched any baseball or hockey during the past ten years. But at least all of those sports can say undefeated teams get to compete for a championship. College football is not only unfair, but enjoys using that unfairness to lure us in. And I won't be lured any longer.

A Field So White

2010-10-22T01:30:00.000-04:00

So there's a white field.

How white, you ask?

Soooo white. Sooooooooooo white!

It's A Field So White!

And now it's on YouTube! Hooray!

Yeah, I know, this is pretty much the moment you've all been waiting for, the day when A Field So White would be available to the masses. It reminds me a little bit of when the printing press was invented.

Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about-

A Field So White is a musical film produced in 1984, essentially a collection of inspirational music videos. The songs are about helping other people and doing good stuff. The music is by Lex de Azevedo (a fairly renowned LDS composer), and the music, clothing, and hair in the videos are straight out of the eighties! Some people find this latter element humorous.

I think this quote from the back of the video cover pretty much sums up how I feel about it:

"A Field So White promotes sharing, caring and loving activities. It is a pioneering event in Christian entertainment and will become your favorite video to be played and re-played over and over again."

*****

A few years ago I did a google search to see if A Field So White had come out on DVD. Not only was it not on DVD, it wasn't for sale anywhere! And you still can't buy it new, though there are some used copies with exorbitant prices on Amazon.com. It's not easy to get ahold of. And the other day, after watching it for the first time in a few months, I thought to myself, "If somebody out there has a sudden urge to watch "Mrs. Mahoney" and does an online search, that person should not be disappointed."

And from now on, they won't be. And neither will you.

Now, a lot of people get a good chuckle out of the choreography and styles in A Field So White. They think it's "funny". I don't begrudge them that, but I actually quite enjoy the music and find the themes touching. It's well-done! It pulls at my heart-strings! For some reason there are strings in my heart!

But whatever your purpose--to laugh at the eighties, to scoff at choreography you deem silly, or to be inspired to good acts while enjoying quality music--if you follow the links below, all of your wildest dreams will come true. At least it's possible.

By the way, my favorites are "Maria Alvarez" and "Mrs. Mahoney", with a slight nod to "The Mighty Winds of Change." "Share It" seems to enjoy a sort of cult status. But they're all good.

Note: YouTube has a "playlist" feature which lets you put videos in a queue and save them as a playlist. I made one with all the videos from "A Field So White" for easy viewing, you can do likewise if you want to watch them in order.

The songs from A Field So White:

Texts are like Cows

2010-08-10T17:12:00.002-04:00

I kind of hate text messages. Do you kind of hate text messages?

Let me tell you why I feel so.

But before I do that, I may as well say what they're good for. Text messages are great for relaying one small bit of info, such as, "The dog has been fed", or, "Your house just burned down." Or asking a simple question, like, "Can I eat your last doughnut?" That's probably easier than making a phone call, right? And obviously texts are better when no noise is allowed, such as during a dance recital.

Text messages are also less time-sensitive than phone calls, which can be nice if you're busy baking a pie. (And even if you're not busy, you can always pretend you're busy....like when a girl you don't like texts to ask about your weekend plans. This has not happened even once, though.) And perhaps what texts are best suited for, something that really makes them worthwhile, is mass communication, such as inviting a 100 people to a fondue party on short notice, or changing the details of a rendezvous involving 600 people.

And that's all nice. Pretty nice. But I still kind of hate text messages. And that's because far too often we lose our way as a society, and use text messages for what they are very poorly suited:

Extended conversations.

I hate it when text messages are used to have an extended conversation. In fact, I loathe it. But I don't abhor it, that's going too far.

Here's the point. When used for long conversations, texts usually become:

Distracting. They're like an interrupting cow, and especially so if your ringer sounds like a "MOOO!!" (Kudos to you if this is the case.) I generally have a pretty one-track mind (1.5 on a good day), so when I settle down to a task only to be interrupted over and over by a cow, it really slows me down. If it were a mule it might not be as bad.
Extremely inefficient. An unofficial experiment just now showed that it takes about six times as long to enter a text message as to just speak it. That's not so bad if it's a one-word message, as it doesn't take long to say a word like "Freakazoid!" But imagine if you had to enter this entire blog post into your phone. Or better yet, imagine if you were part of the hypothetical experiment where you place infinity monkeys in front of infinity typewriters until one of them types all the works of Shakespeare; only in this version, you are one of the monkeys, and you're using a cell phone instead of a typewriter. Imagine how much faster you could inadvertently produce the entire works of Shakespeare by randomly talking instead of randomly enterting text on your phone?!
Expensive for people with crappy cell phone plans.
Inducers of tendonitis in the thumbs.
Characteristic of teenage girls: I would ask, who is most known for their dexterous and voluminous production of messages comprised of text? That's right, girls aged 13-17. So do you want to be more, or less similar to a teenage girl? Or perhaps you literally are one, in which case you get a temporary pass on this point. You also get a prize, because I doubt anyone of your demographic will read this.
Social Impropriety: If you've ever read a Jane Austen novel, you know she's all about propriety. And one sure way to violate her rules, and to lessen your chances of a happy marriage with Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth or whomever, is to send a lot of texts while in social settings. I'm confident she would not approve.

The bottom line for me is this: You can be an interrupting cow, or you can not be an interrupting cow. And don't forget there are pros and cons. While "moos" can be annoying, even a cow of the interrupting variety can likely produce milk, and by association cheese and ice cream, which are always good, unless you're lactose intolerant, or trying to lose weight, or a vegan, or otherwise at odds with the dairy industry.

Or to put it another way, is the following your destiny?

"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Interrupting Cow."
"Interrupting C....."
"MMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Diaper Advice from the Masses

2010-05-31T19:03:00.015-04:00

A few months ago I asked my facebook friends for advice on what diapers are best. Diapers are a big part of my life, so I needed to know. Actually it was for my sister Annie, who's due to have her first baby....tomorrow! Since old facebook statuses disappear into an unsearchable abyss, I'm posting the responses here for a handy reference. Read on to expand your diaper knowledge.

Additional suggestions welcome, thanks again to all those who contributed!

(The picture to the right is just shameless promotion of my cute niece Adriana...who happens to know a lot about diapers.)

All you mother-types out there, which disposable diapers are the best?

JJ says:

We go with pampers. They say huggies causes rash and they did to josie. The cheap ones are flimsy like paper. Never tried luvs or whatever the other one is. If you have newborn try the swaddlers.

Jodi says:

It depends on the baby. Huggies or Pampers though.
I loved the pampers swaddlers when Kristen was a baby. Now I use the Costco brand diapers though. Just as good as Huggies to me!

Eden says:

We like the Huggies for Newborn-Size 2 then at Size 3 we like to switch to Luvs. Pampers gave my oldest a bad rash.

Jaron says:

We have tried them all and the ones that we prefer are the Target Brand diapers. Right now we are using Huggies, but that is only because that is the only brand available on this stinking island.

Ronnie says:

Huggies seems to work better on chubbier babies- but they have worked well on my skinny kids. I like the way Pampers smell. And recently I've gotten into Target diapers. I think they changed the material or the cut or something but I love them. They do a great job and it's a dramatic difference in price. Why pay a lot for something you throw away?

Actually though- I'm seriously thinking about getting into cloth diapering though- sure there's clean up- but my eco-friendly side would feel better about it. I also hear it's better for toilet training...

Amanda says:

Wow, I'm shocked to see good reviews of the Target brand! They totally leaked for my kids...but I'm glad they worked for you guys. I think it totally depends on weight and age. BUT I've tried the Costco Brand, Huggies, Pampers, the WalMart brand and the Target Brand. I like Pampers Swaddlers HANDS DOWN for newborns. They are soft and they fit well. After that I switch to the Costco brand. Huggies were good for my baby girl, but have leaked a lot more on Rio.

So if it's a boy I'd say Swaddlers, then Costco or Pampers. Girl- Swaddlers then it doesn't really matter. I think the main difference in diapers are:
A. How comfortable they seem for the kiddo and
B. How often you have to change them

So, Target diapers were cheaper, but I had to change the kids 6 times a day to avoid leaking...they are also super-bulky for my skinny kiddos. With Huggies/Pampers I can change em 3 times a day and they seem like they'd be more comfy. Costco ones are almost as good as Huggies, I think. maybe one more change per day.

Okay, so there's my way-too-much-info analysis of the Diaper market. I should try LUVS then I'd have tried pretty much everything. :)

Michael says:

This is totally different for each kid. Ours can only use Huggies without getting diaper rash.

Marie says:

For newborns I think we used Huggies and liked them. We used luvs sometimes too but I didn't like the of them. I mainly used the walmart brand when Lilly grew bigger though and never had any problem with them. I was lucky cause I didn't have a baby prone to diaper rash

Ashley says:

Pampers Swaddlers for newborn to 6 months... In my opinion!!!!

Becky says:

IN CASE you haven't received enough answers...

I agree that Pampers Swaddlers are best for newborns - so SOFT! But then we switch to store-brand because they're loads cheaper and do the job credibly. Huggies are decent but seem to soak through easily. TMI?

P.S. I'm a little shocked Jaron responded to this. :-)

*****

Addendum: Several additional diaper suggestions can be found in the comments to this facebook note (the imported version of this blog post).

Hooked on Phonics is overrated

2010-05-02T01:48:00.007-04:00

I've got this really cute and awesome niece, Caslea, who's five years old. She's also really smart. Recently she was asked to write down all the fun things she wanted to do over the weekend, and using her prodigious phonetics skills, this is what she came up with (I understood all except one):

go swimeeg
go to a reschot
woch a movy
hav fun
play the spanish game
ol uv us get a penny
be nise
play with eech uther
go bulleeg
go to the pork
play gams
eet canndy
go to chuckee cheese's
bee happy
by donut's
eet food
mak lemenad
get lecerish
do a pordy
mac stuff
blow bloo's
mace a cayk
go to disnlee land
have a pnicnik
play with zeeko
if someone left, mak a spis
go to the museeume
go on a chresher hunt
jres up
go to sleep
jreec lemunad

My favorite phonetics: "chresher hunt", "jres up", "jreec lemunad"

Activities I most want to try: "go to the pork", "ol uv us get a penny", "do a pordy"

She's only in kindergarten, but it's pretty awesome how she figures this stuff out. She's obviously smarter than I was, I don't think I learned how to write like that until second grade....if ever.

Also, I think her list would make for an extremely divertive weekend; next time I need some quality fun I'll refer to it. Thanks Caz!

The Color Orange: How I almost turned into a carrot, and what I learned

2010-04-20T00:27:00.014-04:00

I just got done eating a pound of carrots every day for a month (March 6th through April 4th). Actually I got done over two weeks ago, but I've been on a really long road trip ever since and couldn't share any of my findings. Now, at long last, the moment one or two (or even three) of you have been waiting for:

What happened?

Eating a pound of carrots every day was difficult, much more so than I had anticipated. But I did it anyway-I was dedicated to the Carrot Cause. For the first 28 days or so, as I was plugging along, testing out new methods of eating carrots, and hoping my GI tract wouldn't implode, I didn't notice any change in my skin color. On day 28, however, I compared my palms with those of a few other people, and we all agreed mine were a little more orange (or red, or both) than the others. I kept looking around and asking people what they thought, and over the next few days I became convinced that:

Both my palms and my soles were more orange than before. Not overwhelmingly so--no one stopped me on the street and screamed, "You have orange palms!"--but noticeably more than other people's.
My face had more color to it - It seemed more red than orange, but it looked like I had spent a day or two outside, when in reality I had been living like a vampire for the prior several days and seen very little sun. I also wasn't wearing any blush, so we can rule that out.
No other part of me changed color in any noticeable way.

That's the good news--I observed some modest changes on certain parts of my body. The bad news is, the pictures don't show it very clearly, and maybe only the keenest of observers will notice. Whether it's because I have zero photography skills, or because it's hard to photograph one's own palms, or because I can't figure out when to use a flash and when not, the pictures are inadequate to really show what happened. However, they aren't without merit--you can probably see at least a little color in the "after" pic of the palms, and when I looked at the enlarged "after" pic of my face I could see a tiny bit of red.

Pictures (click to enlarge):

Before After

What else did I learn?

First off, a pound of carrots is both more and less than you think. It sounds like a lot, so at first you might say, "Wow, a whole pound of carrots every day!" Then you look at the bag and you're not as impressed. But then you try to eat them, and about halfway through your jaw is aching, your stomach is distended, you think you're turning into a carrot, and you still have half a bag to go. That's when you say, "I don't think the human body is meant to ingest this many carrots in one day." And you're probably right.

Second, carrot smoothies are, for reasons unknown, anathema to my stomach. The first few days were fairly smooth, and on day four I tried putting most of a day's carrots into a smoothy with some fruit (banana, apple, orange). The smoothy tasted surprisingly good, and I thought I'd found a great way to get get the carrots down faster, and with less likelihood of developing jaw arthritis. But a few hours after drinking the carrot smoothy, my stomach went crazy. I had all sorts of bloating and pain. Nothing could calm it (I tried a ton of remedies). I didn't even blame it on the smoothy at first, I just thought I had exceeded some "carrot threshold" and I was paying the price. And I almost gave up as a result. But as my stomach very gradually calmed over the next five days or so, I kept thinking back to the smoothy and growing more suspicious of it. I tried making a similar smoothy one more time to verify my hypothesis--this time I carefully spread the smoothy-consumption out over the whole day--and sure enough, I had some of the same symptoms, though they were less severe and didn't last as long. Who knew smoothies would be the bane of my carrot existence?

Third, it's really hard to eat a whole carrot cake in one night. It's also hard to eat a whole loaf of carrot bread in a day. I tried the cake once and the bread twice, and though they were delicious (except the second loaf, which I screwed up), it was really, really hard to get it all down in a single evening (so much so that I gave away the last fourth or so of the cake and ate some more carrots to make up the difference). And that was after substantially reduced the quantities of the non-carrot ingredients in both the cake and the bread - before the reduction, the cake would have had somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 calories; my changes likely chopped off over 1000 of those.

Fourth, the easiest and most enjoyable way to eat carrots that I tried was the All Carrot No Potato version of this recipe, using Lipton soup and oil. Those were some tantalizing carrots! (see below)

Eventually I quit trying so many recipes and settled on just sticks. After all, this project was supposed to make me more healthy, right? Cake and dessert bread don't usually do that. And while I was trying to use the new recipes to calm my stomach, all it really needed was no more smoothies!

Other tidbits you can take or leave:

During the second half of my experiment, I divided the carrots into AM and PM carrots, trying to eat the AM bag before lunch, and the PM's after. Spreading them out helped my GI tract, not to mention my sanity.

I made a habit of drinking water coolers (zero-calorie drinks that taste kinda like diet Sprite) with my carrots almost every day to make eating them more fun, though I discontinued this practice during the the stomach-craze of weeks one and two.

As Thomas Culwell recommended, I reported a subjective "healthiness level" each day, on a scale of 1-10. The results were pretty unremarkable - they dipped after each smoothy, but otherwise seemed to depend mostly on how much sleep I'd gotten.

I tracked the research in my notebook, checking off carrots and recording observations. There's a picture of these pages att the bottom, but I warn you it's not for the faint of heart - a couple parts have what for many people would be Too Much Information. One day early on I wrote, "[I] feel like a carrot". Another day much later I wrote, "Getting really tired of carrots now for some reason." Go figure.

I've decided that eating a pound-a-day for 30 days isn't the most effective way to turn orange--it might take more than 30 days for the color change to really take effect, and you probably don't need a whole pound each day for it to happen. I postulate that half-a-pound every day for 60 days would be more effective.

Turns out, there are a lot of carrot recipes out there.

Conclusions:

Eating a pound of carrots every day, like crocheting and garbage-collecting, is harder than it sounds.
Carrot smoothies are dangerous, and sometime in the future they may be used for biological warfare.
I may be less prone to turning orange than your average Joe Shmoe.
Eat fewer carrots for a longer period of time if you really want to turn orange.
I will never eat another carrot. At least not on purpose. At least not very soon.

Carrots in pictures:

the carrot research journal (repeat warning: TMI):

Scrabble Scores

2010-03-30T20:22:00.001-04:00

I finally broke 500 points in Scrabble!

Mind you, it was on facebook Scrabble, where the rules are a little different (you can try crazy words and look up words within the game), but I'd never gotten that high before, on probably a few hundred previous attempts - a typical score is around 300. This time I got 526 points! And I won by over 300 points, something else I'm sure I've never done before. Other than perhaps the time I got a bingo with the word "bingoes", this may be my crowning achievement in Scrabble to date.

Some of the words that got me there:

WATERING for 76 points
QUA for 63
JOTS for 44
VOWELS for 39
ZONED for 39
a handful of others worth around 30

Here's what it looked like at the end (opponent's name removed to protect the somewhat-innocent):

A different game that I'm in had something really funny happen. In the game (seen below) my opponent played the word "toile" (apparently a type of cloth) right next to a triple word tile, where all I need to do is add on one letter to get a triple score. Perhaps she didn't realize that "toile" is one letter short of spelling "toilet", "toiled", "toiles", "toiler" and maybe other words....or perhaps this is all an elaborate joke. I can't be sure, but I'm going to add a 'd', use a couple more letters to make two words, and rake in about 40 points.

Carrots are orange, are you?

2010-03-06T23:30:00.007-05:00

Will carrots turn me orange? I'm not sure, but I'd like to find out.

See, I've often heard that if you eat enough carrots your skin will turn orange. My college roommate Jake wondered about this, and even designed an experiment in which he was to eat a pound a day for a week; only he gave up after a couple days. Was he sick of carrots, or did he just not want to turn orange? And would it have worked anyway? More importantly, how would having orange skin have affected his dating life?

Questions lingered.

Lately I've consumed copious carrots. And while enjoying this carrot bounty, I've oft been reminded of the carrot questions of yesteryear, and the unfinished experiment. Isaac Newton once said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Well Jake's kind of a giant (he's about 6'4), so I'd like to stand on his shoulders and sample the view. Not to mention finish the carrot experiment that he started. In doing so, not only may I advance the frontier of human knowledge, I will also find out if carrots can turn me visibly orange.

So here's the plan:

Starting today, I will eat a pound of carrots every day for not just a week as in the original experiment, but for a month! I'll only stop if I turn clearly and grotesquely orange before the end of the month, or I become deathly ill. Afterward I'll post my results, with a picture

Related things I've looked into that you may want to know about:

Turning Orange: When your skin turns orange after eating carrots it's called carotenosis. The compounds that turn you orange are carotenoids, and carrots have a lot of them. Many other foods contain carotenoid (mostly vegetables and fruits), but in widely varying amounts. So you might be able to turn orange from eating, say, mangoes, but it's a lot less likely (and maybe impossible) that you would eat enough of them for this to happen. Carotenosis is benign, and the treatment is to stop eating carrots.

Vitamin A & likelihood of Death: One thing that's not benign is getting way to much vitamin A. It gets stored in your liver and can have detrimental effects. Will I be getting way too much during this experiment? Maybe but not really. First of all, vitamin A consumption is cumulative, so if I ate a pound of carrots every day for the rest of my life, it might build up to toxic levels. But in the short term, I'm probably ok. Second, the natural precursor to vitamin A that you get from carrots is not as likely to be harmful as the preformed kind you get in some vitamin supplements. And that's why toxic doses of vitamin A come almost exclusively from either overdosing on vitamin supplements, or from eating liver. As a safety precaution, during the experiment I will not take any supplements containing vitamin A, nor eat even one liver.

Will my Whole Body Turn Orange? It's possible, but most often the visible color change is limited to the palms and soles, with honorary mention to the knees and the skin on either side of the nose.

Price of Carrots: Did you know carrots are free? That's right, you can go to the grocery store and pick up as many carrots as you want, and you don't have to pay for them! That will be really convenient for the next month or so. Ok, I'm lying. But in Weight Watchers, the ever-popular diet plan, carrots are considered a "free" food. That means that while there are limits on how much you can eat of most foods while following Weight Watchers, there's no limit on how many carrots you can eat! This is because they have so few calories that the positive benefit of the fiber is equal to or greater than any detriment derived from those extra calories. So carrots are free. You couldn't get fat off them if you tried.

Price of Carrot Cake: Carrot cake is not free.

Last and probably least, a couple "before" pictures, with focus on the palms:

UPDATE: Here's where I talk about the results of the experiment.

Sandwiches Revisited

2010-03-02T00:07:00.002-05:00

This is a photo response to Nathaniel's photo response to my original post about sandwiches:

And it was oh so good.

a little birthday cake

2010-02-25T23:59:00.002-05:00

Sometimes cake is fun to make. Here are a couple I made recently:

(3 layers, all chocolate cake, half vanilla frosting)

(4 layers, all lemon cake and frosting)

Fun times.

Some things I learned in the process:

Cake tastes really good
Cake will make you fat.
Cake will make you really fat.
Looking at pictures of cake may make you fat.
You are now fat because you read this.

Another thing I learned:

Frosting is even more unhealthy than I thought. I knew it was full of fat and sugar, which is always good, but I didn't know it has 1.5 grams of trans fat per serving!! And even though the cake doesn't list any trans fat, it's made with partially-hydrogenated oil, so you know it has some. And cake (with frosting) is one of my favorite desserts....I will now light myself on fire (if I don't get a heart attack while looking for the matches).

An old adage I learned:

When life gives you lemons, make cake and frosting out of them if possible.

And by the way, if you wanna see some cakes that are legitimately impressive, take a look at this sampling of birthday cakes my Mom made over the years. Just don't use it to try and calculate how much trans fat I've gotten from cake and frosting in my life...I not sure I want to know.

On Spaghetti Sauce

2010-01-24T20:35:00.040-05:00

I had the most amazing plate of spaghetti today.

Sharing the plate with my spaghetti was a rather large salad, and they intermingled some as I ate. I love it when my spaghetti and salad intermingle. Occurring at first only along the border betwixt the spaghetti and salad, their association grows as I eat until they have fully intermixed. And something wonderful happens in those moments of commingling: a synergy produces bites that are more savory than the sum of their respective scrumptiousness, more divine than their combined delectability. And sometimes, if the stars align just right, a bite will be supremely succulent. It will be “The Bite”. You can't predict when this will happen, but when you taste The Bite, you know it. When I taste The Bite, I feel as though in heaven. Spaghetti and salad heaven that is. You could offer me your finest foreign cuisine, or a trip to a world-famous five-star restaurant, and at that moment I would decline. Not because I don't like foreign cuisine. On the contrary, I'm a big fan. But because right then there's nothing I would rather eat. And because when The Bite happens, it can't be topped. In that instant it's all I want. It's all anyone would want.....food-wise. They might want other things, like rewarding relationships or a comfortable house. If they're into that.

You may have noticed I'm talking about spaghetti. (Not to mention salad—but we'll save that for another day.)

Oh yes, spaghetti.
I'm keyed up about spaghetti.
Let's talk about it.

Does spaghetti sound like a dish to get excited about? Most of you would say no. It sounds like something you'd cook when you don't have a lot of time or ideas, but something you rarely expect to fully satisfy. When I was younger I felt the same way. Spaghetti was ok. But just ok. It was an enjoyable meal, but nothing to write home about—I don't recall ever doing so. I thought the same of salad.

Nowadays things are different. Now spaghetti can be very appetizing, even tantalizing. I'm sure you're wondering why. At least I suspect it. And I want to tell you about it. More especially, about the sauce. Yet first, I have a question or two you may be able to help me with.

Why is spaghetti sauce called spaghetti sauce?

Noodle dishes certainly create a terminology quandary. It never feels right calling red tomato-based pasta sauce spaghetti sauce, because sometimes I eat it with linguine. Is it then linguine sauce? If I eat it with rotini is it rotini sauce? Can it be penne sauce? Conchiglioni sauce? Stringozzi sauce? Not only is it confusing and potentially inaccurate to call it spaghetti sauce, the other sundry noodles likely feel left out.

Other terms are in use, but each has its flaws. To wit:

Tomato sauce? Sounds alright, but in many countries (both English- and Spanish-speaking) it means ketchup. And in the U.S. it usually refers to a plain, unseasoned sauce.

Marinara sauce? Fairly useful, but it's inaccurate because it means “of the sea”, suggesting it contains seafood. So unless you put fish in your sauce, it really shouldn't be called marinara.

Pasta sauce? Not specific enough, obviously.

Red sauce? Even less specific.

Red pasta sauce? Still not specific enough.

Tomato-based pasta sauce? Pretty good, you may be on to something....

Gourmet tomato-based pasta sauce? There's an accurate one! But clearly too long.

It's a sticky situation, and there may not be a ready solution. If you find one let me know.

In the meantime I will make do with what meager terminology is available to me.

I'll call it spaghetti sauce. (*cringe*)

Back to Spaghetti Sauce

As it happens, a few years ago I was introduced to a method of making spaghetti sauce far superior to what I had previously known. My roommate Ray taught me how to make it. He had learned some tricks from a friend of his who lived in Italy, after which he experimented with one or two other ingredients and created a magnificent sauce before passing it along to me. Ever since then I've prepared the sauce regularly, and always enjoyed it. Some batches turn out better than others, and it's never quite the same twice, though I follow the same basic recipe. But it's always good. And it's so much better than “regular” spaghetti sauce, I feel like it's worth sharing with the world. Or the three people who read my blog. Whichever.

My spaghetti timeline is as follows:

In 2006, spaghetti was ordinary.

In 2007, Ray taught me about the mysteries of spaghetti sauce.

In 2008, spaghetti and salad played integral roles in my massive diet overhaul (when I instituted a version of the DASH diet and lost 25 pounds within six months).

In 2009, I developed theories about how spaghetti and salad can work together to abolish world hunger.

In 2010 I decided to write a blog about spaghetti sauce.

Before I give you the recipe for this spaghetti sauce, I feel a few other salient points should be made about the proper enjoyment of said sauce. What are these points? I'm glad you asked.

First, the spaghetti sauce in question is meant to be used generously. Put plenty of it on your noodles, don't hold back. If you're a sauce-scrimper, start by putting twice as much sauce as you normally would, and go from there.

Second, for some reason this spaghetti sauce is almost always better the day after. I don't understand why, but it tastes better if it's been in the fridge overnight and then gets reheated. It's mysterious, yet consistent. Don't get me wrong, it's still enjoyable on Day One. But it may be helpful to understand this, perhaps to avoid any hasty judgments about the sauce. On Day One, your spaghetti experience will have only just begun.

Third, the spaghetti sauce is best enjoyed with salad, most especially when the spaghetti and salad intermingle as described above.

Note on salad: Whatever vegetables you have are fine. I usually use tomatoes and broccoli on my salad, but I don't think it's possible to have too many vegetables. Lately I've been using a lot of others, like bell peppers, cucumbers, olives, onion, mushrooms, pea pods, and avocado, as well as non-vegetable things like croutons, bacon bits, and cheese. And dressing. (If you're trying to cut calories or reduce saturated fat intake, Spritzers® are an excellent alternative to regular dressing.)

When you get all this together on a plate, that's when miracles start happening.

And finally, The Recipe*:

What you'll need:

1 pound ground turkey
~1/3 cup olive oil
2 onions
1 Serrano pepper
5-10 cloves of garlic (most of a bulb)
1 bell pepper
5 medium tomatoes (or 1 28oz can diced tomatoes, see substitutions below)
2 29oz cans of tomato sauce (or 2 26.5 oz cans of spaghetti sauce, or one of each)
1 teaspoon basil leaves
1 teaspoon oregano flakes
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon sugar

Instructions: Cook meat and drain. Dice all vegetables. Heat olive oil in a separate, large pan (wok, large sauce pan, or deep frying pan) and add onions, Serrano pepper (finely chopped), and bell pepper. Stir. Mince garlic and add. Add tomatoes after onions and bell pepper cook a little bit. Stir regularly throughout. Once the vegetables are tender, add tomato sauce and stir. Add basil, oregano, sugar, and cinnamon, and stir. Add cooked meat and stir. Simmer for 5-30 minutes, stirring regularly. Serve w/ noodles** of your choice.

Lazy-Man's substitutions:

Replace garlic cloves with about 1-2 teaspoons of garlic powder. (I do this when I don't have garlic or a good press on hand.)
Replace fresh tomatoes with a 28oz can of diced tomatoes (I usually do this).

Really-Lazy-Man's substitution:

Pay someone to prepare this meal for you.

*Please note: This is how I usually make it, and it feeds 6-10 people for one meal. You can increase or decrease the quantity very easily, and experimental changes are encouraged. Try almost any vegetable, replace turkey with chicken or beef, and use other spices in place of or in addition to those on the list. Start with the basics, and then see what you can come up with. And I actually don't measure the spices or oil but I tried to make a reasonable guess about the quantities.

**Whole wheat noodles recommended.

And may they intermingle till the end of time.

Take a Tour, Win a Prize

2009-11-18T20:00:00.003-05:00

I'm renting a room in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, part of the greater Boston area, on the South side. I posted an ad on craiglist a few weeks ago saying I was looking for a place, and I got an email from this guy Bill. He described the room and house to me, it sounded ok, but when I requested to see a picture he said he had lost his camera cord or something like that.

So I went with it, and saw it for the first time right as I was moving in. It was close to work, and appeared to have all the necessities, so I figured what the heck. And it hasn't been bad.

But it has been....special. It's probably the oldest house I've ever lived in, and there are lots of things I find comical about it. I was gonna post some pictures, but when my camera kept switching back to video mode on its own last night, I got the idea to make a video of the place instead. I guess it was fate. And that's why you're getting a tour, if you can handle it. It's a little longer than I expected (you get a six-minute tour of my home), so to make it more interesting I've also added a twist:

TWIST: There are clips from ten different songs used as background music, and I challenge you to name all the songs and artists from the soundtrack. Whoever names the most wins a PRIZE! That's right, I said it, you get a prize. And I will send it to you, if I don't hand deliver it. It could be something good. Let your imagination run wild.

RULES: One point for each correct artist, one point for each correct song title. If fewer than three people enter, you have to get at least half of the possible points to win a prize. If three or more try, whoever gets the most wins. Post your answers as comments or send them to me, and the only thing that's cheating is looking at other people's answers beforehand. Good luck! :) Oh, and if anyone successfully names all of the artists and song names, I will give you $100 (Seriously, but I seriously don't think you can do it).

Contest ends a month from today, if not sooner. :-)

Petrified Orange

2009-10-18T23:06:00.001-04:00

I had no idea what it was. Then I thought it was rotten. Then I noticed it was hard, and odorless. That's when I realized...it was petrified.

It's an orange, and it's petrified.

I found it in my car, under the seat, when I cleaned it out after my recent cross-country drive. I don't have any memory of placing it in the car, so I have no idea how long it had been there. Possibly millennia. Yes, it's a '94 Camry, but the manufacturers may have made an error when they recorded the year.

Should I have notified the local curator? Probably. Should I be contacting national archaeology organizations? Possibly. Maybe I'll send them a link to my blog.

At least one question remains: Has this ever happened before? I've heard of petrified wood. I've heard of petrified manure. But I've never heard of petrified oranges, much less seen one with my own eyes. Some people say this happens all the time. In their back yard. I say they're making it up. So what if google got 320,000 hits for petrified orange (only 721 when in quotes)? They could all be typos, right? I demand proof, like a 40-pound box of petrified oranges delivered to my front door.

Or a picture, whatever.

And if you'd rather just bring cookies to my front door, that's fine too.

Preferably snickerdoodles.

Thanks in advance.

Coast to Coast Update

2009-10-16T19:07:00.002-04:00

I'm probably hard to keep track of, so I'll give an update of my recent activities for anyone who wants to know:

Arizona

I spent the whole Summer in Tucson, AZ.

Washington

At the end of August I drove up to Tacoma, WA. The drive was a measly 24 hours or so, and I basically did it in two days, not counting the first night when I just drove from Tucson to Glendale. I took the Utah route and stopped for the night in Sandy, at my brother Hyrum's house. I got to Tacoma on August 31st.

While in Tacoma I rotated at a hospital called Multicare, one of several places I might end up for residency. I was also able to visit a few friends from college that live in the Seattle area (Bryan Cook, Amanda and Adam Walsh, Trent and Sarah Cunningham). I didn't sight-see very much while I was there, but I did:

Wander around downtown Seattle and drive past the space needle a few times.
Experience the revelry of being in a sports bar/grill when Washington beat Southern Cal. in football. People were going crazy!
Listen to a lot of grunge music while driving around (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Silver Chair, Weird Al...).
Discover pianos used/owned by Rachmoninoff and Debussy in a local antique shop where I went to find quarters for laundry.
Get a free membership at a gym, where I went climbing and accidentally took a short boxing class.
Stroll down a part of Pike St other than the part that's famous for fish-throwing.

The Drive

Around the end of the month, I packed up my things and set off on a cross-country drive to my current rotation, in Binghamton, NY. I decided to take it slow and break up the drive into reasonable distances. I also tried to plan the drive around people I wanted to visit, even if it took me a little out of my way. By the time I was done I'd taken it even slower than planned, and visited a few more people than planned, but it all worked out fine in the end. Here's how it shook out, in ten easy steps:

Day 1: Drove from Tacoma to near Coeur d'Alene, ID. Since I got a late start, I got really tired and had to stop and sleep in a parking lot, even though I was only about a half hour from my destination. My butt was sore the next day from sitting on my wallet while I slept.
Day 2: Drove the rest of the way to my friend Jalyn's house, just north of Coeur d'Alene. I took a nap there, and then she gave me a tour of the area, which is beautiful, just like I'd read in my grandpa's autobiography. That evening, after stopping to watch a little college football, I drove to somewhere in Montana.
Day 3: After sleeping at a motel in Superior, Montana, I vowed not to frequent any more motels the rest of the trip. I drove to Rexburg (just missed seeing Allen and Rachel Camp near Missoula, they were in church), and checked out some of my old stomping grounds, including Crestwood and Biddulph Hall. I had dinner with my old roommate Jared Cook, his wife Kristen, and Kristen's sister Angie McKeen. Like a lot of the people I visited on this trip, they were old friends from my ward at BYU-Idaho. I felt really nostalgic being in Rexburg, and it was great to see a few old friends. The new food court at BYUI blew my mind, and it was the first time I'd seen the finished temple. Afterwards I drove to Pocatello for the night and stayed with my friend Amy Snelders.
Day 4: Hung with Amy, checked out poky for a bit, then drove down to Utah in the afternoon. I visited my sister Amy's family in West Jordan, and stopped for the night with my brother Hyrum's family in Sandy.
Day 5: Spent part of the morning on an assignment for school. Started driving to Wyoming in the early afternoon, then changed my mind and decided to stay in Utah one more day. So I went to visit my Grandma in Provo, my Grandpa in Springville, and had dinner with my friend Aubrey Stribling at a Peruvian restaurant. I drove back to Salt Lake to visit my friend Serena Roundy (and incidentally Melanie Ward, another friend who coincidentally lives with her), and then stayed the night in Ogden with my former Arizona roommate, Steve Austad.
Day 6: Took off early for Wyoming. In Cheyenne I stopped to ponder whether I wanted to go to Denver, or just keep going East. After writing the pros and cons on a napkin, I drove down to Denver. I stayed the night with a classmate of mine, Dave Goforth, at his older brother Doug's temporary abode. We both slept on the floor in a room full of guitars and microphones, plus cardboard cutouts of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
Day 7: Worked in the Denver VA Hospital podiatry clinic (another place I can apply to do residency) with Doug, which I enjoyed. Afterwards I drove up to visit Joe and Mary Ann Ledosquet, who live a little further North in the Denver area. I had dinner with them, and then they let me use their office for a two-hour conference call I had to participate in for school. Stayed with Doug and Dave again that night (one more night with Elvis).
Day 8: Drove from Denver to Des Moines, IA, my longest drive of the trip so far. I stopped to visit and stay the night with my friends Matt and Erin Pitcher, and got to meet their new baby Skylie! Erin served tamale pie for dinner. The only other time I'd had tamale pie, a few months earlier, was on a crazy trip (like this one), in the midwest (like this time), with old friends from college (like these ones), who'd just had a new baby (as Erin and Matt had). Tamale pie...it's magical.
Day 9: Drove from Des Moines to North Chicago, where I stopped to see my friend Caroline and stay the night. To give me a proper Chicago experience, she bought deep dish pizza. Dave Goforth (the classmate I saw in Denver two days earlier) was on his way to Pittsburgh, and after talking with me decided to stop over in North Chicago as well. We had both met Caroline on a medical mission last February, so it was like a mini mission reunion! We celebrated with cookies and milk.
Day10: Drove from Chicago to Binghamton, New York. At about 12 hours, it was the longest single drive I made on the trip. It was also the only day I got especially tired on the drive, but I found fun ways to stay energized, like doing jumping jacks in the car....not really. More like fountain drinks, peanut M&M's, loud music, and frequent stops. When I got to Binghamton I immediately moved into my apartment, where I am this very moment.

During this rather long drive (normally 42 hours, I took closer to 52), I decided that I'm in favor of the nomadic lifestyle. I had a ton of fun seeing all the different places and visiting all my friends and family on the trip. It was thrilling to, on a daily basis, visit people I hadn't seen in years. I also got to listen to a lot of sweet music, and had ample time to ponder mysterious subjects. The trip as a whole took about twice as long as I originally planned, but I have no regrets, I'd do it again tomorrow....actually I just might. Well not tomorrow, but I'll have a few more fun drives before this school year's over.

New York (not city)

I'm in New York! Binghamton is a cool town. It's small (maybe 150K), and I don't have any friends. But I like the program: the residents and attendings are cool (two of the residents are from my school), and the balance between surgery, clinic, and didactics is excellent. It's busier than my last rotation, but that's because my last rotation had about two weekends per week, on average. Additionally, the autumn colors are amazing here (seriously), and to top it all off I've been told I'm only about 20 minutes from where the Priesthood was restored to Joseph Smith and where he translated a portion of the Book of Mormon. I may go scout it out this weekend.

So things are good. The biggest problem I have now is that every time I say I'm in New York, everyone assumes I mean New York City. Well I don't. I'm about three hours Northwest of NYC. This ambiguity and synonymity creates much confusion, but I hope to some day eradicate it.

Stuck in St Louis

2009-08-28T20:34:00.020-04:00

This is part three of a four-part feature about Ben's trip back for his high school reunion, here are part one and part two if you missed them.

Monday (8/3):

I awoke at noon on a couch in St Louis.

I didn't even bother going to the airport on Monday; having called the US Airways help line the night before to check flight statuses, I knew my chances of getting on a flight were slimmer than an anorexic fashion model wearing the world's smallest corset.

Instead, Erik and I went to Pei Wei and ate breakfast and lunch simultaneously, or in rapid succession, whichever you prefer. We also chatted about philosophy, cuz that's what we usually do if you leave us together for more than five minutes.

Like icing on top of the Being-Stuck-in-St Louis cake, Monday also happened to be my day to submit a presentation for school, due by 6pm Arizona time. To write this presentation on surgical fixation of bones, I normally would have referenced podiatric surgery textbooks, but unfortunately I didn't see any of those lying around Erik's and Sachin's apartment. My saving grace was that Sachin, though oblivious to my plight, had left his laptop at home; plus he somehow already had the internet hooked up even though they had just moved in. Resorting to Wikipedia and a few random websites, I managed to pound out a mediocre presentation in a little over three hours. To make matters more interesting, I was scheduled to deliver said presentation the following evening at a time when, for all I knew, I would be in a plane somewhere over Oklahoma.

Monday night I slept on the couch again at Erik's and Sachin's place. Wondering if I needed more padding due to some bars in the couch (it has built-in recliners), Erik produced the world's largest comforter. I placed it on the couch and folded it over again and again until there were at least five layers. I felt like the princess in “The Princess and the Pea” would have felt if there had been bars instead of a pea and she had used the not-yet-produced world's largest comforter for additional padding.

Tuesday:

All flights were full, but the one on Tuesday at 2:45pm was a little less full than the rest, so I got a ride from Erik and stood by for that one. At the gate however, I heard a familiar phrase: "It looks very bad." It was deja vu all over again. As bloated with passengers as all the rest, the flight had no space for me.

Left languishing in the main terminal of the St Louis airport, my life had secretly just gotten five times more complicated; and that's why your head might explode if you read the next few paragraphs: The next flight which left at 5:50pm didn't arrive in Arizona until just after 7pm, and I had to be in a conference call at 6pm AZ time to give the mediocre presentation I had written the day before. If I could make it on the 5:50 flight, I could ask someone else to call in for me when they took role and say “here”, in hopes that I could still join the call before it was my turn to present; but what if I didn't make it in time? Alternatively, I could stay in St Louis for another night and do the conference call from there, though there was the question of who would pick me up from the airport this time, and finding a computer I could take over for two hours to give the presentation.

It took a few calls to get ahold of the doctor who was to host the conference call; when I did, and once I'd halfway-explained the situation, he told me I could just join another call he was doing the next night if I didn't make it. That made things easier than expected. I preferred not to wait for the next day's conference call, because someone else would basically be giving a better version of the same presentation during that call, which would be a great way to highlight how much mine sucked. But thanks to Dr Jafe, I now at least had options.

Around the same time I called the help line again to check on flights. Now this may surprise you, but all the upcoming flights to Phoenix were hopelessly overflowing with passengers. And that's not even counting the amorphous blob of standby passengers rolling along from one flight to the next, much the way The Blob himself would look if he were on a treadmill running two mph.

Searching for alternatives I asked the help-line rep if any "nearby" airports had flights to Phoenix that weren't so full. It was then that I was told something that would have helped me immeasurably had I but known it three days earlier: Flights out of St Louis going to Phoenix on US Airways are always full with no exceptions under any circumstances, while flights out of Kansas City on the same airline going to the same destination always have open seats. The reason for this is not clear to me, but if I were forced at gunpoint to say whether this bit of information would be useful to someone in my situation, I would most likely say yes.

Thus illuminated, I wasted no time in asking the rep to switch my listing to a flight out of Kansas City, and said, “Screw St Louis, I'm going to KC baby!" Any way I can.

I still needed a ride out of the airport and a place to stay. Since I couldn't get ahold of Erik or Sachin, I texted my old college roommate Jake Erickson, whom you may know better as the other member of Cows Never Die. I hadn't wanted to call Jake at first because I knew his wife Amanda had just had a baby about 10 days earlier, and when I had talked to him the week before they were inundated with out-of-town visitors. But Jake called me right back, told me all the visitors were gone now, and offered to come get me.

Jake and Amanda live in a community called New Town, a rather picturesque planned city that kind of looks like a movie set...which could be because it was designed by the people who made the set for The Truman Show.

Since Amanda was busy caring for the new baby, families from church had been taking turns bringing them dinner. (Jake thinks this is funny, because he's perfectly capable of making dinner. “What, the wife's down? Life cannot go on! Everyone will starve!”) But that day the people who brought dinner had unwittingly cooked for me as well. The main course was tamale pie (which it turns out I like better than actual tamales), followed by blueberry crisp for dessert.

Chatting with Jake and Amanda was fun, but it was cut short by that blasted conference call. I was glad I hadn't tried joining the call late after flying to Arizona, because for the first time ever the moderator asked me to go first. My presentation sucked. I knew it would. I gave a little disclaimer at the beginning, and then everyone else joined in the fun and gave their own disclaimers, saying something like, “Well, since everyone else is giving a disclaimer today, here's mine...”

After the conference call I was left to ponder how I would get to Kansas City the following day. I looked at craigslist, Amtrak's website, and info for a Columbia shuttle that goes to and from both airports. There was nothing convenient on craigslist; I would have shelled out the cash for a train or shuttle, except they were much slower than I expected. They couldn't have gotten me to KC any earlier than 3pm, and my goal was to be there for a 3pm departure.

With dreams of convenient transportation dancing in my head, I drifted off to sleep in the as-yet unoccupied baby room.

See how the story ends in part four, coming soon.

High School Reunion, Part II

2009-08-25T21:48:00.016-04:00

This is part two of a four-part feature about Ben's trip back for his high school reunion, here's part one if you missed it.

Saturday (8/1) :

The second reunion event was a picnic at Brashear Park, only it was rainy so it got moved to the HS cafeteria. My food for the picnic: pudding snacks. Mmm.

There was a different crowd at the picnic than the previous night. Families came out, and they brought their children with them. There were even games for the kids to keep them busy. At one point all the kids gathered together for a picture—I knew several of my classmates had children, but seeing a big bunch of them together was shocking nonetheless. There were big and small, ranging in age from zero to about ten. These kids will probably graduate high school sometime between 2017 and 2027. I wonder when my kids will graduate...

We took advantage of being in the high school by having a little tour; there's been some remodeling. You've still got the endless orange lockers, but the trim is different in some places, the science rooms are torn to shreds, the hall by the locker rooms looks newer, and the library expanded like an amoeba to consume the once-proud computer lab where my Computer Club friends and I played countless hours of Descent (a first-person shooter spaceship game). I felt a little nostalgic seeing my old lockers and classrooms, and the halls I'd walked in as a wee freshman when I was socially awkward and didn't know how to woo women. Wait, I still don’t know how? Crap.

Quick tangent: The girls that organized the reunion are awesome—they did it with no reward and no complaint. Most people would never take the time, but they gave countless hours unselfishly putting it all together. Lindsey Fraser, Tara Duck-Hoffman, and Jennifer Moore deserve some serious credit. Sorry if I forgot anyone. Thanks to them everything went smoothly.

After the tour dissipated I sneaked off and took a look at the copy machine in the teachers lounge that I had once broken making flyers for the “Ed for President” campaign. I just wish Mrs Nothdurf had been there to revoke my voting privileges a second time. Good memories all around, though possibly unconstitutional.

Caroline went with me to both reunion events on Saturday, and for the most part we didn’t confirm or deny any relationship between us. I introduced her as my friend and let people draw their own conclusions. At least one person asked her, when I had stepped away, if she was my wife or girlfriend. Others didn't ask but you know they were thinking it.

After the reunion picnic and tour, Caroline and I went home and made sweet, sweet sandwiches at the top of the hill. Actually we made them in the kitchen. Annie was in charge of tomatoes and photo-documentation. You may recall my blog about sandwiches—these sandwiches followed the same basic formula, but with the addition of thicker, redder onions and plenty of avocado, as well as a huge fresh tomato from the garden.

The reunion finale was held Saturday evening in Too Tall's Two eatery and spirits. A storied venue, Too Tall’s was a bar and local hangout for years until the owner and then mayor of Kirkville set it ablaze in an attempt to collect insurance money. I didn't know this until I was in the building and David Morley told me the story. It was later reinvented as an event hall with bar-like qualities.

Saturday night had the best turnout, plus dinner was catered. I got to talk to several more classmates I hadn’t seen yet, and a couple former teachers. Chatting with Mrs Coy brought back memories of the time I gave a speech about WWII using Warcraft 2 terminology. I don't know if she had any idea what I was talking about but I still got an A.

Sometimes I play scrabble and Saturday night was no exception as Annie, Caroline, and I faced off in a not-really-that-epic battle. Annie seized control, perhaps due to her literary prowess, and she would have won had I not in dramatic fashion gotten a bingo to take the lead for good. I love bingos, but I don't love bingo.

Sunday:

The reunion was over, and it was time to go home. Ed Kohler picked me up around 11am to give me a ride to the St Louis airport, even though it was about two hours out of his way. I was really tired and slept almost the whole way there, waking up just long enough to eat a rather tasty sandwich from Jimmy Johns, and for Ed to play me some songs by Richard Cheese. Richard Cheese, whom Ed described as “the greatest thing to ever happen in music” (or something like that) is a comedian who performs covers of heavy metal, rap, rock, and pop songs in a lounge style reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Some of them are hilarious, such as his version of Welcome to the Jungle by Guns 'N' Roses.

So Ed dropped me off at the airport and headed back to Columbia where he lives. The good news was I had plenty of time before my 5:50 flight to Phoenix. The bad news came a short time later when the lady at the gate said, "It's lookin' really bad." Despite her sour prediction, I waited for the flight anyway just to see if I'd get lucky. Alas there were no open seats, not to mention several other people who were standing-by and didn't get on either. Gold is scarce in St Louis and I got none.

Once the plane was gone, I did a little research at customer service and got the skinny on upcoming flights to Phoenix (there are three daily) and even got a fancy 800 number to call for up-to-date flight info or to switch my listing. That number is the best-kept secret in stand-by travel.

Stuck in St. Louis I did what any sane person would do-I called Erik Olsen, a good friend from high school whom I hadn’t seen in about six years and who hadn't made it up to the reunion. He picked me up with roughly no notice, and we chilled at his new apartment where he's living with Sachin Bansal, another high school friend I hadn't seen in forever. Basically I had another mini high school reunion in St Louis. Erik and I shared music and life stories until Sachin got home from the hospital a couple hours later. Sachin recently started a new residency at WashU after spending three years in general surgery and then having a change of heart. I wouldn't want to be a general surgeon either, the hours are miserable.

Erik and Sachin had just moved in and the living room was still crowded with boxes. I made it a little more crowded with my luggage, and a few hours later I was passed out on a couch, somewhere in St Louis.

Find out what happens next in part three of the extended reunion tour.

The Reunion, Part I

2009-08-23T23:20:00.017-04:00

Editor's Note: This is part one of a four-part feature about Ben's trip to Missouri for his high school reunion. We would have run it all together, but when he exceeded the 10,000 word mark we thought it would be better to split it up. Part two coming soon.

I recently went back for my 10-year high school reunion. It was a last-week decision. Two months before the reunion I got a surprise phone call from one of the organizers, after which I gradually warmed to the idea of going, but I didn't schedule a flight until five days before. The reunion was on the weekend, and I left a day early so I'd be more relaxed, and in case of delays since I was flying standby. One week later, after one high school reunion, nine passes through various airports, one trans-state hitchhike, five unanticipated sleeping locations, and one killer game of ultimate frisbee, I returned home at last. After such a wild trip I did what any rational person would do: I created a running diary of the experience. Here it is for your reading pleasure.

Thursday (7/30):

Arose at 8:55am after about two hours of sleep. I had an hour-and-a-half until my 10:25 flight, I hadn't packed, I didn't know how to get to the airport, I didn't have a ride, and I should have left five minutes ago. But like I always say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to....improvise.”

When I reached the ticket counter at 9:56 there were 29 minutes before my flight. The lady at the counter said, "I won't be able to get you on this flight." I knew my day was screwed if I didn't make the flight, but I didn't think arguing would help. Turns out she was lying because three minutes later she had re-entered all my info (she couldn't find my listing), printed off my tickets, and told me to run like the wind. I'm not as fast as the wind, but I made it to the gate with 15 minutes to spare, and easily got a seat (remember I was flying standby, where seats are like gold).

At the Phoenix airport with just under an hour 'til my next departure, the lady at the St Louis gate said, "It's not lookin' good." I wasn't sure if she meant the flight or her face, but I didn't wait to find out. Instead I went to customer service and had a chat. Finding out the flight to St Louis was oversold with lots of people waiting, while a flight to Kansas City that left at the same time was merely "full", I opted for “full”, and ran back across the airport (kind of like the wind) to wait for the KC flight. I was the second-to-last person to board it. Gold is precious.

Waiting for the flight to take off I texted feverishly, telling my St Louis contacts I wouldn't make it, and contacting my high school buddy Frank Fleschner who lives in KC to see if he could help me out when I got there. He said he could, and the plane was off. Frank was pretty amazing—how many friends when called with two hours notice will pick you up, put you up for the night, and drive you three hours to a small town in the middle of nowhere the following day? That's what Frank did.

For dinner we went to "Gates" for some authentic KC barbecue. Frank warned me, “you'll probably get yelled at.” Sure enough, even before I neared the counter a worker screamed, "Can I help you?!" They may not be civil, but they can make some killer BBQ, which is really all that matters in the end.

The balance of the evening was spent watching various youtube videos on Franks rather large tv (Apparently when you have TiVo you can do that sort of thing). First we watched a video of opera tenors singing higher and higher notes until their heads explode , one cool enough that Frank shows it to all his visitors. Ok so their heads don't really explode.

We then proceded to watch a few matches from the professional Korean Starcraft league. Starcraft in South Korea is a 50+ million dollar industry, sponsored by Samsung, Microsoft, and some big Korean bank. You could call it the Great Korean Pastime. Plus they have some pretty sweet commentators, such as this guy, who's like the Gus Johnson of professional Starcraft.

Friday:

I woke up at 5:17am and couldn't go back to sleep for a while, so I wandered around outside Frank's house. I finally went back to sleep around 8 and didn't wake again 'til noon, after which I was really groggy the rest of the day. It may have something to do with my yanking around my circadian rhythms like the Chain Chomp in MarioKart—you know Baby Mario's special item, the one that barks like a dog while it yanks you down the track and makes you pray it won't let go on the turns cuz you might end up going backwards? That's how my rhythms felt. I also felt a little like like I'd overdosed on benadryl, the way I did the night before I took the MCAT...but that's another story.

Frank and I took off for Kirksville in the afternoon, hitting up a sandwich joint called Mr Goodcents for lunch on our way. The worker got really animated when I asked him to make my Italian sub w/ marinara sauce the way I always do at Subway. He must not get that a lot. On the drive to Kirksville Frank listened to choral music while I slept, and at the end we threw in some Rage Against the Machine for a little pre-reunion adrenaline rush, much like we always used to do before choir concerts....What, we never did that before choir concerts? Well we should have.

We had a few hours before the reunion so Frank left me at my house. My parents were on vacation, so the house was empty, and I hadn't seen it that way or been home in the summertime in about a decade. Hoping to finally kick the grogginess, I took a long cold shower. Then I was cold, but still a little groggy. My sister Annie came over after a bit and we hit up Il Spazio, a decent restaurant that may or may not be Italian, for dinner with Frank, Ed Kohler, and Brian Woehlk, other high school buddies of mine. Just as we were leaving we saw two other high school friends, David Morley and Josh Lobert, coming into Il Spazio. After a little chat it was time for part one of the reunion: a social evening at the Dukum Inn (a bar).

Seeing all the old classmates was strange and cool all at once—a little like going back in time, which I've only done twice previously. Some people I recognized easily; for others it took several glances before their identity dawned on me. I was a little surprised at how many names I remembered--Facebook helped some there, but other names I hadn't been reminded of by any social networking sites seemed to pop back into my head out of nowhere. The turnout was decent, plus I figured more people would come on Saturday. I talked to several people (actually yelled mostly cuz it was so loud in the bar) and found out what they'd been up to for ten years. One thing about our class is, it's small enough that we basically all remember each other, so even people I didn't talk to much in high school were still fun to catch up with, see what has become of them and all. That kept me busy for about two hours and then I went home.

On the way home I called my friend Caroline who was driving down from Chicago to visit for the weekend. I didn't know what time she'd be arriving, but she told me she'd just gotten into town and was waiting outside my house. I remembered our back door was unlocked, so I told her to go in and make herself at home. To make sure she had the right house I described it to her, “White siding, light tan brick, white pillars, a big oak tree...”

When I got home I didn't see anyone in the house, so I called her to see what was up. Caroline reported she had tried the front door which was locked, and the back door which was also locked, so she was waiting on the deck behind the house. Well we don't have a deck. Confusing the neighbor's house for ours, Caroline had tried to break into their house and was now enjoying the view from their deck. Luckily they didn't see her and call the police or she might still be in jail. More importantly, that would have thrown a wrench into my plan to have her pose as my girlfriend (sort of) at the reunion on Saturday...

The story continues in Part two.

If You Could Hie to Kolob

2009-06-25T03:13:00.003-04:00

I thought it would be nice to record myself playing some songs for my posterity. Even though you're not my posterity, I'm happy to share it with you as well. :)

This may be something that I do periodically. Any requests will be considered.

Now without further ado: "If You Could Hie to Kolob"

Where I'll be in the next year

2009-05-17T20:54:00.020-04:00

So for the fourth year of medical school I had the opportunity to set up my own rotations. The idea is not only to learn a lot, but also to rotate in places I may want to do my residency. So I submitted applications to programs across the country, and my choices were governed by the following criteria:

1) I wanted a program with a "family-friendly" work schedule. You always hear horror stories about the long hours and sleep-deprivation that residents experience, and I decided that's not for me. Call me crazy, but I think I can learn what I need to learn in a 40-hour work week, and if it's a little longer than that so be it, but who needs to work 80-100 hours a week and walk around like a zombie while not having any free time for three years? I don't.
2) I wanted a program that provides a good learning environment and a fair balance between surgical and clinical experiences.
3) I did also consider geography, but in a way different from most people. I tried to figure out what cities in country would be best for dating. In other words, where are there a lot of single Mormon girls around my same age? The answer of course is Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. But since I couldn't get a spot in Phoenix and there weren't any appealing programs in Utah or Idaho, I had to go to the next best thing. For this purpose I set up rotations in Boston and NYC. And then I incidentally ended up with a few rotations in Tucson, AZ, which may be rather good on that front as well.

What did all this yield? A rotation schedule that will be taking me literally all over the country, including moving a minimum of eight times. Here's my schedule for the next year, all rotations are podiatry externships unless otherwise specified:

Jun: Tucson, AZ - Inpatient Medicine
Jul: Tucson, AZ - Emergency Medicine
Aug: Tucson, AZ - General Surgery
Sep: Tacoma, WA
Oct: Binghamton, NY
Nov: Boston, MA
Dec: "vacation month"
Jan: Detroit, MI
Feb: New York City
Mar: New York City
Apr: New York City
May: Dallas, TX - elective with Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics

Housing is provided or arranged everywhere except for NYC, Boston, and Tucson in August. (That's right, just August. Basically my school screwed me over on that one.) I'll be driving to all of these locations and carrying nearly everything I own in my car. Consequently I've been trying hard to downsize so that moving will be relatively easy. It's hard, but I'm getting better at throwing things away with every passing day. I've also been trying to use up all my food before leaving but I don't think I'm gonna make it, even with two months of focused effort.

So thus begins the great adventure. Starting over in new cities eight different times, making ridiculously long cross-country drives almost every month, all while trying to both learn all about podiatric surgery and make good impressions everywhere I go. Difficult? Fun? Stressful? Invigorating? Life-changing? Utterly ridiculous? Time will tell. I guess this is what happens when you're a fourth year med student whose priorities are to have good work hours, get a good education, and be around good girls.

What the heck is a Podiatrist?!?

2009-04-10T23:43:00.031-04:00

Over the past three years I've reached a startling conclusion:

Most people (>90%) have no clue what a podiatrist is, what one does, or how one is educated. Shocking, I know. I have been aided in reaching this conclusion by the questions and comments I get from friends and associates, such as:

“Oh Pediatrics! Working with kids will be cool!”
“A Pedicurist? I love getting pedicures!”
“So is that a two-year or a three-year program?”
“Will you be doing any surgery?”
“Now you guys don't have to do a residency, right?”
"Is a podiatrist a......doctor?”
“Eww!!?”
“So like besides athelete's foot...like what else do ya'll treat?”
“What is a foot?”

Ok so I haven't gotten that last one yet. But all the others are common. For that reason I've decided to summarize some key points about the field for everyone who wants to know. If you'll join me for a short journey, together we'll proceed to enlighten minds, abolish falsehoods, and eradicate misconceptions. Ready? Let's go!

What is a podiatrist?
A podiatrist is a surgically-trained physician that specializes in treating problems of the foot, ankle, and lower leg. Phew, that was easy.

How does one become a podiatrist?
The education process is strikingly similar to that for other types of doctors....we go to medical school. Now since most people don't know how medical school works, that's another hurdle. Medical school lasts four years, the first two of which are classroom and test oriented, with the second two being clinical (i.e. rotations). Everyone who goes to medical school then does a “residency” to complete their training. “Podiatric medical students” do “podiatric surgical residencies”, which usually last three years though some are only two, and the bulk of time is spent in foot and ankle surgery.

Here's a year-by-year breakdown of the Path to Podiatry:

Year 1: Classes-- Anatomy, Histology, Physiology, Biochemistry, Immunology, and more
Year 2: Classes-- Pathology, Pharmacology, Microbiology, general medicine, and others
Year 3: Rotations. 3 months of podiatry; also neurology, dermatology, radiology,
endocrinology, rheumatology, wound care, family practice, and 1 or 2 electives.
Year 4: Rotations. One month each of general surgery, emergency medicine, and inpatient
medicine. Seven months of podiatry including various month-long audition rotations (aka clerkships or externships) at sites that have podiatric surgical residencies. One elective.
Year 5: 1st year of surgical residency. Lots of surgery, some clinic time.
Year 6: 2nd year of surgical residency. Same idea.
Year 7: 3rd year of surgical residency.

What makes it totally sweet?

We take the same classes as other medical students, plus some that they don't take, but our tuition is actually a lot lower!
We go to school in paradises such as Arizona or Florida.
With only a three-year residency, it's the fastest way to become a surgeon!
It's got good earnings and is in high demand.
It has a very family-friendly work schedule.
The specialty is diverse. Despite being limited to the foot and lower leg, we treat all sorts of pathologies—skin problems, bone infections, nerve pains, circulatory disease, muscle and tendon disorders, arthritis, diabetic and other ulcers, gait abnormalities, bunions, and on and on. We're like ten specialties in one!
The career is versatile: You can start your own practice, work in somebody else's, work for a hospital....or not work at all! :D Just kidding.
Speaking of versatility and diversity, as a podiatrist you can also choose an area of emphasis if you desire. For example, some have primarily surgical practices and others don't do any surgery.
And best of all, podiatrists are so cool that there's not even a word for them in Spanish! They couldn't think of one that was good enough.

What more could you want? I mean other than a box of fresh donuts...

Now if after carefully reading this blog your questions remain unresolved, please come talk to me. Just this time don't ask, "Aren't you excited to work with kids??"

what happens in Guatemala doesn't stay there

2009-03-28T20:35:00.035-04:00

Note: I picked out a few pictures for this blog, but there are a bunch more on facebook in my album entitled "Guatemala". If you don't have facebook I can send you an invite to view the album....maybe eventually I'll put them on Picasa and put a link here.

I went to Guatemala. Again.

This time for a medical mission. It was a two-week trip, and it counted as one my clinical rotations for med school! Isn't that cool? Yes, it's cool. I wasn't thinking much about the trip until a few days before I left, so it came on kind of suddenly. One day I was lackadaisically living a life of luxury; the next I was speaking Spanish and cutting off warts in a third-world country. And it was incredibly awesome! Here are a few thoughts and descriptions from the experience; I've divided them into categories so you can read the parts that most interest you if this is too much to handle ;)

Doctorliness: For eight days we set up makeshift medical clinics in small towns in Gautemala; there were no pre-existing clinics in these locations, rather we just used whatever government building or school was available and made our own. We were about fifty people, comprising several specialties including family practice, podiatry, dentistry, dermatology, pharmacy, optometry, pediatrics, obgyn, and microbiology. Patients came in, the Spanish speakers amongst us took a brief history and sent them to one or more specialties, and then we did the best we could to diagnose and treat their problem. Despite our limitations we were able to provide treatment for nearly 4,000 patients in eight days, and several of the patients that need it are also receiving follow-up care through local doctors. For me personally it was an amazing medical experience because I saw so much, worked with several specialties, and had the freedom to try whatever I felt capable of doing. My activities included history-taking, podiatry, derm, general medicine, dentistry, and plenty of translating. The medical part of the trip was: awesome.

Spanish: I hadn't spoken Spanish regularly since 2003, and I was uncertain how much would come back to me. I got both a little excited and a little scared when I heard the the people around me speaking Spanish in the Houston airport, and on the flight down I primed my brain by reading out loud from my Spanish Book of Mormon, listening to Maná, and studying some Spanish medical terminology. I think it worked, because during most of the hour-long drive from the airport to Antigua I was talking to our native Guatemalan driver Julio, and I felt really comfortable doing it! That was the first test, and it really only got better from there. And what really surprised me was that while there were words I couldn't remember and my vocabulary was smaller than it had once been, I felt like I could speak Spanish better than ever before! And that includes during my mission. Overall I felt more fluent, smoother, and more able to speak like a native. And on top of all that, I learned a lot of Spanish medical terminology, how to talk about things like tingling, shooting and burning pains, menstruation, spleen problems, coughing up phlegm, and plantar fasciitis to name a few. :)

Visiting the Mission:
I took one weekend and went to visit friends from my mission. I had six different areas on my mission, but four of them were in the capital, pretty close to where we were staying. It took me a couple hours and three bus rides to get to my first destination, and when I got there and started walking around, it was the weirdest feeling. To think back to nine years earlier and all the things that have happened since....it was very, very nostalgic, and that nostalgia continued for two solid days while I was visiting.

I had only notified a handful of people that I would be visiting, and all I could tell them was "sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning...", so finding people was an adventure. In that first area some highlights were:

Seeing Lucy and Edgar, a family we taught who was baptized after I left the area; they're thinking about going on a mission as a couple!
Visiting the first house I lived in, which has been remodeled and looks completely different--the lady there let me in and gave me a tour of the house even though I was a complete stranger.
Visiting my first cook and her family--the two little girls have grown up (they're now 15 and 9) , and the older one likes to sing in English, so she sang me "My heart will go on" from the titanic soundtrack, and it was awesome! I found out that even though she is an excellent student, the only novel she has ever read is the fifth Harry Potter book, simply because books aren't readily available. My description of public libraries made them jealous, and I may send her the rest of the series. That family is an amazing example of living life well amid trying circumstances.
Driving a stick-shift car that I borrowed (so I wouldn't get mugged walking around at night) through some narrow streets with lots of speed bumps.

I didn't make it out of my first area that night; I quickly found that wherever I visited I had to stay at least an hour; after all I came from 2,000 miles away and hadn't been there for six years. My cook's parents who lived down the street put me up for the night--the bed was rock-hard and the shower was ice-cold, but I wasn't complaining! :)

On Sunday I managed to visit my remaining three areas, spending about three hours in each. Each one was it's own emotional trip down memory lane. Just walking along the streets brought back such a flood of memories and feelings! There were so many experiences that I didn't remember until I saw the place that they had happened, and they didn't stop coming. I visited a few more families in those areas. Unfortunately some of the people I most wanted to see had moved away or were not home.

There were plenty of sad stories and plenty of happy stories, some of which it might have been more comfortable not to know about, but others which were pleasantly surprising. And at the end of the two days I couldn't believe how emotional, hectic, and unique those two days had been. One of the weirdest/funnest things was seeing the kids who were now about 8 years older than when I knew them! So different, and so fun to see how they had changed and matured. And as an added bonus, a family in my last area even found me a ride back to antigua so I didn't have to take the busses. :)

Lifestyle Trends:
Intriguing trends from Guatemala which may or may not continue now that I'm back:

Going to bed at 10 or 11, getting up at 6 or 7 every day.
No tv-watching at all.
Spending only an average of 15 minutes per day on the computer.
Wanting to work more, not less, even when I was sick.

Other Fun Stuff from the trip:

We stayed in a convent the first four clinical days, where the nuns cooked for us. The nuns were awesome and really fun, and the food there was incredible!
Speaking of food I really got back into the cultural food there and loved eating black beans, eggs, and fried plantains at every opportunity.
The nuns taught me how to speak a little Kaqchikel (a Mayan dialect), and I used it to banter with them and to greet people on the streets.
We hiked a volcano and get pretty close to the lava, and we didn't start hiking down until it was already dark!
There was an "open mic night" at a restaurant in Antigua, and I performed three songs with the band there and played the hand drums on a couple others; two other guys in our group also performed. I'm an international star! haha...
Took a tour of a coffee plantation with a few friends, which was very interesting and exceeded my expectations.
Bought some avacados on the street my first day for about ten cents each and ate them with a tiny plastic spoon.
I only got sick twice, for about a day each time, and didn't take any antiobiotics.
I was introduced to a lot of new spanish music, thanks to a couple special friends; since returning home I've started listening to it a lot, and I love it! So many good groups I didn't know about...

Some statistics from the trip:

Number of cold showers I took: about 7
Times I went out for pupusas: 4
Steroid injections I gave: about 12
Teeth I pulled: 4
Matrixectomies I performed: 1
Patients we saw and treated: over 3,800
Number of pills I took for my unexpected allergy symptoms: about 17
Tubes of chapstick I purchased and inexplicably lost: 2
Times I asked Dave to borrow his chapstick: approximately 25
Times I got diahrea: 1
Hot-pads that look like chickens purchased by me and friends: 2
cameras I broke: 1
Sentences I heard beginning with "Fíjese que...": over 500
Number of times I sang the phrase: "Ay mujer, como haces daño...": At least 75
Times an older Mayan lady asked us about having friends-with-benefits: 1
Number of times I want to do this again: As many as possible

The Guatemala experience was an incredible one. There's so much more I could tell you, and each section in this entry could be an entry to itself. I wished I could stay longer, and it felt weird to come back. Here's some of the important stuff I learned: If you're in medicine and have a chance to go on a medical mission, do it. If you're a returned missionary and have a chance to go back and visit, Do it. And if you have an opportunity to purchase a hot pad that looks like a
chicken, Do it. :)

Let's talk about sandwiches, baby

2009-02-17T22:19:00.030-05:00

The Sandwich.

For some mundane. For others exhilarating. What images does "sandwich" conjure up for you? What emotions does it spur?

Over the years sandwiches have rarely excited me. I can think of a couple exceptions, but most often it was PB&J here, plain ham there. I do remember eras when I downed grilled cheese sandwiches by the bakers dozen due to their sheer greasy palatability, but generally for me sandwiches were boring.

Not anymore!

It may surprise you, but I didn't wake up one morning with a glorious vision of how my sandwich experience would be revolutionized. It was only after months, even years of gradual and sometimes imperceptible changes in the constitution of my sandwiches that I suddenly realized, "I used to be bored by sandwiches, now they thrill me!"

So how did it happen? After many hours of pondering, the only way I can think to explain it is by describing the six sandwich phases that I've passed through. All of this has occurred in the past 2.5 years since moving to Arizona. These phases, in ways that at times boggle the mind, have brought me to my present state of sandwich bliss.

The Phases
1. The BBQ sauce phase.
2. The bell pepper phase.
3. The Subway phase.
4. The mustard phase.
5. The onion phase.
6. The pineapple phase.

Confused? Let me explain:

Phase 1. the BBQ sauce phase
I used to think all a sandwich needed was BBQ sauce. When I started bringing sandwiches for lunch here at med school, I brought them with just ham and BBQ sauce. I liked them at first like I always had, but they just didn't have enough ingredients and I got tired of it. I was bored.

Phase 2. The bell pepper phase
Shortly after the BBQ sauce phase I started making a lot of ham and cheese sandwiches with red bell pepper slices in the sandwich-maker my first landlady owned. Learning how good those bell peppers tasted on the sandwiches began to soften my heart and prepare a fertile ground for learning about other sandwich condiments. Nonetheless, it was not long before these sandwiches too were, you guessed it...boring.

Phase 3. The Subway Phase
For the first 24 or so years of my life I was cheapskate enough that Subway was out of my price range. This changed in the past few years both because I stopped being so fanatically frugal and because I started being more health conscious. And with the advent of the five-dollar foot-long, my Subway consumption peaked last Summer at an average of about four sandwiches per week. Not only did I become a master of the nuances of ordering Subway sandwiches, this is when my eyes were opened to the wonders of vegetables as sandwich condiments. That's why this phase could also be called the vegetable phase.

Phase 4. The mustard phase
As I was eating Subway sandwiches and continuing to largely flounder in my own efforts at creating a viable sandwich, I made an alarming discovery: mustard. That's right, much as Ben Franklin discovered electricity and Columbus discovered America, I discovered mustard. And in a similarly monumental manner to the effect of their discoveries, discovering mustard changed my sandwiches forever. You see, I'm not talking about your average every-day mustard. I'm talking about Great Value Southwest Spicy Mustard, and I'm talking about Great Value Honey Mustard. You can find them at Wal-Mart. When used in concert, these two mustards are all the sauce a sandwich needs. And ever since I started using these mustards, my sandwiches have not been boring.

Phase 5. Onion Phase: It's really quite silly that the onion phase should even exist. I should have known about the impact of onions ever since the Subway phase, if not before. I think my hangup was, even though I knew onions were good, I didn't realize how striking an impact they could have on my sandwiches, nor did I comprehend their ease of use. When I finally did start using onions consistently on my sandwiches, the immediate positive impact was astounding.

Phase 6. The pineapple phase: The pineapple phase is really another name for the tomato phase. I have always loved tomatoes on sandwiches, but in years past didn't get around to buying them, often beccause of the aforementioned cheapskatishness from which I for so long suffered. Well, over the past year I've started buying tomatoes a lot more often, and I've been kicking myself the whole time for not doing so sooner. After falling in love all over again with tomatoes on my sandwiches, one day I found my kitchen devoid of tomatoes and I had to scramble. So I thought, what makes tomatoes good on sandwiches? Mostly it's because they're sweet, thick, and juicy. So it logically follows that other things that are also sweet, thick, and juicy could also be really good on a sandwich. The first time this happened I used orange slices as my replacement(surprisingly good, by the way), and more recently I tried pineapple. Now I sometimes use both tomatoes and pineapple on the same sandwich! There's almost too much sweetness, thickness, and juiciness to go around!

It's been a long hard road, and I'm sure more discoveries await, but I can now say that I am fully entrenched in a love affair with sandwiches. The sandwiches I now make incorporate all of the crystallized principles that can be derived from the phasic progression described above. And they are truly glorious!

How to build the sandwich, from bottom to top:

1. Good-quality whole-wheat bread, toasted
2. Thin layer of low-fat mayonnaise on bottom slice only (optional)
3. Three or four slices of Premium Oven-Roasted Chicken Breast (or turkey)
4. Plentiful Onion slices
5. Great Value Honey Mustard and Southwest Spicy Mustard, in perpendicular criss-cross patterns
6. Tomato slices, providing full coverage
7. Pineapple (optional, or in place of tomatoes)

Also try: olives, mushrooms, bell peppers

I might not believe it if I hadn't experienced it personally, but it's actually quite difficult to overstate how good these sandwiches are. Let me try: They're the best sandwiches ever made in the whole world! Ok, that may be going a little bit overboard. What I will say, with no reservations, is that the sandwiches I make and eat today are not boring. I'm excited!

Excuse me while I go make a sandwich.

A blog about blogs...

2009-02-17T00:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, I have officially started a blog. This first post isn't a real post...it's a fake one. It's where I'll mention part of why I'm doing this and the vision I have for it.

I have several friends and family members who have blogs, and I've noticed there are a few general types.

One type is the "journal" blog, usually started by people with families to show off their kids. I like these blogs, but only because they're about people in my family that I care about. If they were about someone else's family I wouldn't bother to read them.
Another type of blog is the "Cool Stuff" blog, which tells us about stuff the author thinks is cool. This could be epitomized by one of my brothers who blogs sporadically when he finds something cool enough to share.
Another type is the opinion/essay blog, where the author takes on potentially controversial subjects and writes a persuasive essay to show what they think about it and try to back it up. I have one friend who does a good job of this and tries to stimulate debate.
Another important type of blog which I am completely ignoring because I don't read any of these is the "theme" blog. A blog which consistently discusses the same topic, like a blog about basketball, trucking, scrapbooking, or politics.

As I thought about starting my own blog, I was inspired at times by one type of blog, at times by another. In think in writing the blog I will sometimes be more like one and sometimes like another. I mostly hope to stay away from the journal type, occasionally touch on something controversial, sometimes be persuasive, and most often just write about something cool. Or, I may completely abandon all these ideas and do nothing of the sort! But right at this moment that's my vision. Sort of. And maybe as a byproduct of all this I'll improve my writing ability.

Will you take the time to read this potentially-silly blog? I have no idea. But if you do I would love for you to occasionally provide feedback, of whatever type strikes your fancy.

By the way, if you want to know when there are new posts, the easiest way might be the box the right side of this page that says, "Subscribe".

Personally, I use Google Reader to gather all the blogs that I follow into one place, and I check it every few days to see if any of those ten or so blogs have new entries. If you don't know how to do this I'd be happy to help.

Are you excited? Should you be excited? Is excitement on your part even conceivable?

By the way my first real post will come very soon, before I leave the country this Friday, February 20th around noon.