How To Research and Become Famous and Be Good At Everything

Children are always coming up to me saying, "Mister! Mister! Tell us how to research!" And I always tell them, "you're not tough enough, kid. Come back when you got the goods!" Finally, today however, as I approach retirement in twenty to thirty years and contemplate my legacy, I've decided to share my secrets. Research secrets!

First things first, choose a fact you wish to learn more about. Just one. A single fact. Two is too many. A detailed summary of facts is not correct -- you're not writing a review article -- and a layman's explanation of a complex series of facts is wrong -- you're not writing pop-science. Pick just one, single, fact. Before you starting choosing, though, let me make it clear that this fact cannot be your favorite fact, it cannot be a revolutionary or particularly earth shattering fact, and, really, it probably shouldn't even be a fact known to anyone outside your specialized circle of peers and some post grads in Belgium. The good facts have all been taken or require a multimillion dollar grant. Do you have a multimillion dollar grant? The fact can be from a subject you care about -- we're not unreasonable -- but that will be your only concession. Cherish it. This fact you will spend the next one to two years of your life learning.

Now that you've chosen the fact you wish to learn you will next have to write up multiple, detailed, technical iterations of why you wish to learn this fact; how you want to go about learning the fact; how you will keep your learning of the fact secret from others; what financing you will receive in learning this fact; and how learning this fact may affect the children, elderly, incompetent, and pregnant around you. You should also include a list of people who have also said things about your fact. Make sure that list is standardized in some random but highly regimented manner. After you've written a sufficient number of drafts of why you want to learn the fact you will then be asked to wait a number of months prior to being given clearance to finally in fact learn the fact.

The next step is preparing a spreadsheet to record data about your fact. This is necessary because the process of learning a fact requires a long drawn out process of reviewing multiple different medical and technical records to identify a dozen different variables which you will then record at least a few hundred times. Make sure the spreadsheet makes sense before you start, though, because if your spreadsheet doesn't make sense now it certainly won't make any sense when you come back to it after a few weeks or months of doing other real life things. And make sure your definitions are concrete, precise, and consistent with the definitions used by other people who have said things about your fact because if not no one will believe it. They'll say your fact was not well designed. Don't worry too much; though, whatever you do now will in the end matter little because at some point you or someone you know will inevitably find a better way to learn your fact half way through thus requiring you to go through the records and spreadsheets and data again. Likely one cell at a time.

Now that you have the spreadsheet as you want it you may begin the actual process of looking at the computer screen thousands of times a day over the course of an endless number of months you will never get back in order to extract the information you need to make your fact. It is likely at some point you will accidently place one datum in the wrong datum column without realizing it and have to spend hours trying to figure out what went wrong, and it is similarly likely that at some point you will realize one of the records you are using to collect data doesn't even have the information recorded correctly. Don't lose heart, though, you'll be far too invested at this point to seriously consider giving up.

Once you have gathered enough data about your fact to actually fashion the fact, it is time to give the data to a statistician. Or, since statisticians are fabulous nonexistent mythological creatures, rather you will stare at a statistics textbook until you find a way to crudely apply one formula or another to your numbers. After, of course, also figuring out how to force that formula through whatever statistics package you do or do not have on your computer. Statistics done you are, finally, presto change'o, through the magic of math, done with researching! You have learned your fact. Congratulations, scientist!

You're not done done yet, however, oh no. You now have to share the fact with others. There are thankfully a number of ways to do so, and you will be asked to do every one. It is typically easiest to first share the fact in the form of a Power Point presentation where you will create many captivating and mercilessly boring slides talking about your fact in a level of detail that even you do not care to know. This will give you the chance to talk about other related facts as well, but do so only briefly. Remember to never lose sight of your fact for it is the most important fact. At least for the sixty minutes or so of your presentation. If you lose focus and meander off topic people will get very upset as this may interfere with their napping.

Presentation done you will then have to create a poster for your fact. This will be similar to your Power Point presentation, but different in that you'll be forced to smash down most of what you'd like to say about your fact into the three small columns of text. Most of the poster should be figures which will keep people's attention when learning about your fact better than any actual concisely written information about the fact itself. The poster will need to be a certain size, using certain fonts, with certain esoteric color and design requirements depending on who you ask and most people won't want to be asked. The font will always have to be bigger and the tables larger which will always mean you will have to say less about your fact, but for posters what matters most is how long people stare at it. Be sure to buy an expensive poster carrying case because it'll probably be something you want to place over your fireplace mantle for years to come. It also lets others know that, damn, that man's a researcher! Or rather just a weirdo walking around with a very elaborate tube carrying purse.

Lastly, you will be asked to write a paper about your fact. It will seem to you at this point that it would simply consist of cutting and pasting all the component parts you've created to date, but you will quickly find that idea ridiculous due to the ten rough draft minimum and crippling word count limits which will effectively preclude any use of adjectives, adverbs, or relevant citations. This is assuming you plan to submit to a journal with anything resembling a coherent instructions for authors. Once everyone has agreed that the current draft of your paper is the best possible draft that everyone can concede to and no further changes that contradict other changes have been suggested you will submit it to the editors who will reply some time later with a list of reasons why the paper is terrible. Thankfully you will be given the chance to clarify and modify your manuscript once more, but only after another five draft minimum. This process may repeat itself indefinitely, but eventually, if lucky, you will find yourself with a journal article about your fact. The feeling at seeing your name as the first author will be indescribably underwhelming.

And that, children, is research. A year or two of life for a fact, a glossy poster, and a journal article that your friends and family probably won't have access to. Thankfully the ladies go crazy for dot plots.





Sexy dynamite.



As a final aside I do have sincere respect for researchers who toil endlessly and often anonymously to advance our understanding of the world. I will just likely never be one of them. Nor would I likely have thought it worth my time to have done so. To the endless march of Progress!




I also coincidentally have sincere respect for champion corgi Risk masters.

Who's the cutest little conqueror in the world?! You are! You are!

Surrounded by Turkeys

I am, literally, surrounded by turkeys. Not literally, literally. But literally in the sense that I sometimes see them at work. Which raises the question, why are they following me?

When I first moved to New Hampshire I expected to see deer, squirrels, rabbits, the usual. Maybe a moose and a beaver to round out a proper New England diorama, and that was it. Instead I found myself constantly slowing or stopping my car to avoid hitting turkeys. They were inexplicably everywhere and, judging by their fearlessness, were clearly the apex predators of whatever it is turkeys feed on. Regardless, when I left New Hampshire I assumed I'd be leaving the turkeys behind.

Instead there're here too. Every day at work I drive by them. Every day I get out of my car they're watching. Sometimes I swear I see them taking notes. I didn't know turkeys were normal fauna of northern California air force bases, but then again I never knew they just chilled wherever the hell they well please either. The only conclusion: al-Qaeda turkey sleeper cell. I am expecting one to greet me coming home from work some day. He will probably be armed.

Only Golden Eagles can save us! Or kill us all.

Blargh

Remember that time I broke up with my girlfriend? Yeah. That was the worst.

In case you want to relive and reflect, here're some photos of Claudia and I in New York and half the entire United States.

Thug Life New Hampshire

You may not be able to tell just by looking, but the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire (or la Vallée Supérieure as it's known in the local French pidgin) is pretty rough territory. Teeming with gangs, hoods, hoodlums, toughs, thugs, and the thick hum of bluegrass harmony. It's a place where drugs like dope, whack, smack, and spank are sold by the handful; where drive-bys are a regular events at local sugar houses and pimps parade unchallenged down colonial boulevards and covered bridges; a place where homicide is the most common cause of death for youths next only to moose attack and bear attack; and where life is cheap because the good die young. If you want to survive on the streets of Hanover you better get street smart, fast. And get a gun too. To keep those moose of your back.

Got Goat?

Haiti may not have much of a future, but it's got good food. (It's got some good people, too, but after my last post I cannot officially go on the record saying that.) I’m not sure I’d ever eaten goat before, but I’d happily do so again.

The majority of our diet there consisted of various staples consisting primarily of fried meats (usually goat or chicken) and fried plantains supplemented by a few eggs, a few breakfast spaghettis, and a few sandwiches of what I can only guess was brain cheese. All washed down with either a 1 L bottle of coca-cola or a pint of Prestige, Haiti’s surprisingly satisfying national beer. There was also conche which tasted like... well, conche, so they can't all be winners, but our best meal, our big banquet meal our final day, was Chinese food. The best damn Chinese food in Haiti and, arguably, in all of New Hampshire and Vermont. And for dessert? Dous makos. Sugar, condensed milk, and... silly putty?

Eat it, share it, or press it up against a newspaper comic to save for later.

 

Hope for Haiti?

Haiti, if I may be so bold, is a lost cause. Some people just haven’t realized it yet.

Despite it currently being quite fashionable I must dissent and say Haiti will likely never, ever get better. I don’t say this simply to be contrarian – I like agreeing with people. I don’t say it because I dislike the Haitian people – I have no strong feelings for them either way. And I certainly don’t say it because I eschew foreign aid – indeed it’s because I so strongly believe in the benefit of foreign aid that I raise the issue. Were international charity and giving a bottomless trough of endless resources, sure, I would say, give to Haiti. They are not, however, and every dollar, euro, or yen spent somewhere is another pound, krone, or ruble not spent somewhere else. In this sense Haiti is more than just a lost cause; it is a black hole of limited resources. 

To begin, Haiti’s neighbor: the Dominican Republic. It is poor, underdeveloped, undereducated, underappreciated, and lives with much the same historical legacy of colonialism and corruption that Haiti does. In fact those with more than an American sense of geography will even note they share the same island in the same spot in the middle of the Caribbean. Yet despite their similar weaknesses over the past few decades they’ve both gone in dramatically different directions and now consequentially enjoy dramatically different presents. No one talks about saving the Dominican Republic. 

Back to Haiti. Since our actions in the present should be guided at least in part by prospects for the future let us focus on Haiti’s current chances for sustainability. A nation’s economy is not the only indicator or even the best indicator of wellbeing, of course, but an economy – any economy – is an essential part of its foundation for wellbeing. Without some semblance of substantive commerce health, education, development, and consequently happiness are all retarded. In light of this the developing world’s major economic advantage over the developed world, and what will largely allow the developing world to save itself, is its possession of a large, cheap, manual labor force with limited regulation. From this perspective Haiti has got it good. Situated close to the US, the most consumeryist consumer nation on the planet, they arguably have most the third world competitive advantages. Looking closer, however, the advantages are only skin deep for were you to want to do business in Haiti you’d run into some obstacles. To do business in Haiti you’d have to import your raw materials to a port and road system in disrepair using gasoline often in short supply to enable a largely illiterate workforce speaking a language spoken nowhere else using an unreliable electrical supply, an unclean water supply, and an undeveloped healthcare infrastructure to make a product that will be grossly overpriced and once again need shipment via broken roads and inefficient ports to countries that can likely buy the same goods elsewhere cheaper all while negotiating what is considered one of the most corrupt and least law abiding states in the world. And the Dominican Republic’s just right across the border. The end result? It ain’t cheap to do business in Haiti. The cost for us of a “decent” hotel room? $100. The cost of a 4 hour drive between towns? $150 not counting gas. The cost of a meal of goat and plantains and coke? $15. Why then would anyone want to do business with Haiti? How then can Haiti ever be free?

Back to the Dominican Republic. Developing nations have other strengths, however: agriculture, tourism, a tenacious population to name a few. With regards to the DR: yes, yes, yes. With regards to Haiti...? Unfortunately deforestation, soil erosion, and general mismanagement have led to a greater harvest of seasonal mudslides than any appreciable agricultural export. Unfortunately expressionless stares and a foreign tongue in a post-apocalyptic wasteland no matter how tropical don’t do much for tourists when manufactured smiles and a familiar language are right next door. And unfortunately the prevalent brain drain combined with one of the highest birth rates in the Western hemisphere guarantee only an ever increasing population with fewer and fewer capable leaders. Western aid makes up almost two-thirds of the national budget and a large percentage of the economy. This is not sustainable, and when the spigots run dry what will happen? When the population increases but the number of jobs and total arable land remains stagnant what will take place? When another populist election funded entirely by donation comes to pass, who will lead?

I think the most striking aspect of Haiti which makes me give up hope is the thoroughness of its poverty. I have been to a number of poor countries: Mexico, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, India and in all of these places there has been the poor, but there has also been, however small, an upper class and, more importantly, a middle class. There has also been a spectrum of poverty such that there was always the sense that there was at least something better that could potentially be obtained. In Haiti, however, outside the private gated communities of the affluent elite there is only a homogeneous lack. The only class seems to be the lower class. There is undoubtedly some difference between the very poor and the super poor, but it is a difference that if anything only heightens the sense of despair.

Immediately after leaving Haiti I flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where I stayed at the Marriot Harbor Beach Resort and Spa to attend a medical conference. It was as big a contrast of wealth and poverty as you can get made all the more striking by the fact that a number of the workers and staff there were Haitian. I attended meetings in overly air conditioned banquet halls, lounged along overly manicured poolsides, and ate and drank more calories than I could ever need to burn. Only a few hundred miles away I had been sweating, working, and living in a whole other world. Perhaps in light of all this excess and wealth any money sent to Haiti, even if used inefficiently or wasted, is worth it. Perhaps when we’re spending thousands on luxury it’s missing the point to argue about the few dollars misspent alleviating poverty. I don’t know, but until Haiti shows promise or my robot heart shows softening I’ll be sending my box tops elsewhere. Polio anyone?

 

Crippling need aside, here’re photos!

* In case it were not automatically readily clear, these are my opinions and my opinions alone. I don’t know how my travelling companions feel about Haiti. I never asked them. I suppose they’d have nice things to say.

Man Vs Mosquito

If I had only one wish, and it were not to wish more wishes, it would be for every mosquito, everywhere, to gather together, holding hands, and to die a terrible, miserable, suddenly horrible death. Explosion. Implosion. Mosquito herpes. Whatever is most unpleasant for them, I’d wish that, and I’d be a happy man.

I recently travelled to Haiti. It was an “experience” in the same sense that military training and medical residency are “experiences.” You can probably rationalize a way to self-betterment, and convince yourself that the whole thing was somehow “good,” but nevertheless you describe the whole experience in quotation marks and would prefer to never do it again.

But let’s not talk about that, let’s talk about mosquitos. In Haiti, there are mosquitos, and they tried to kill me.

My initial mosquito-experience in Haiti began relatively uneventful enough. There was a mosquito here, a mosquito there, but if you avoided making eye contact with them they generally let you be. I left Port au Prince thinking that, of all Haiti’s unsolvable problems, mosquitos were not one of them. Then I arrived into Les Cayes.

Les Cayes is a coastal town along the southern Peninsula of Haiti, and overall is in most ways nicer than Port au Prince. Unfortunately one of those ways is not mosquito populations. They were a bother in La Cayenne where we stayed our first few nights, and they were a menace at the Institut Brenda Strafford where I stayed my last few nights. It was in the latter part of my stay where the mosquitos and I waged war, and it was here that the mosquitos beat me.

The first day at the Canadian ENT hospital (Institut Brenda Stafford) was I thought uneventful enough, but I awoke the following morning with a number of bites over my shoulders and arms. Figuring this was as much my own fault as the fault of the bumbling misguided mosquitos I resolved to redouble my DEET repellant efforts, fortify my canopy netting at night, and maybe kill a few to make an example. The following morning, however, there were still more bites. More bites on my legs. More on my arms. More on parts of my body I didn’t even know the mosquitos had access to. It looked a bit like I had the pox, except without so much the high fevers and crippling fatigue. It was nevertheless then that I knew if I were to survive I’d have to go on the offensive. The mosquitos were clearly coming for me, it was time now I came for them.

Over the next two days I aggressively pursued a campaign of mosquito genocide. Took regular breaks from work to round them up. Paid local militias to do unspeakable things. Only God knows how many mosquitos I killed in those ugly days. Dozens? Hundreds? Millions? We can only hope. The violence reached a climax when the treacherous buggers hired a local roach to lie in wait in my duffel bag in order to assasinate me. He made it part way up my arm and almost to my jugular before I shook him off and promptly smashed him into roach paste. And then smashed him a few more times for good measure. Lacking originality and the capacity for complex thought the mosquitos tried it again the following day, but both the second roach and his conspirators were taken care of once more. And by that I mean their poor mosquito children could no longer recognize their poor mosquito daddies.

Despite these efforts the bites continued appearing. No longer on my back and shoulders so much, I’d successfully protected those with t-shirts, but continuously on my arms and legs, and most specifically on my left knee where I wore my knee brace. It seems a hot swollen knee is mosquito nirvana. They loved biting it so much they purposely flew up my pant leg, past plenty of prime calf biting territory, and up to the one spot in my brace where they could see skin. I’m still not entirely sure how they did it, or even why they did it – do mosquitos hate me? -- but it got progressively disfiguring and generally unpleasant to look at. Thankfully, ten days later, before the mosquitos had chewed my leg off, I gathered my remaining troops, pack my bags, erected a provisional puppet mosquito government, and flew home.

In the end one could probably say my battle with the mosquitos was a metaphor for Haiti’s battles with poverty and legacy of colonialism and corruption. One could probably also just say it was a pointless, needless waste of time, energy, and, in no small amount, blood and plasma which, in a sense, is a also metaphor for Haiti. Regardless, the end. Goodbye Haiti, enjoy your mosquitos. Goodbye mosquitos, may you forever burn in mosquito hell.

 

You know it's a problem when the bites become confluent.

 

Dedicated to Dedicating

National Jewish is dedicated. Both in the sense that its healthcare personnel are dedicated to patient care and in the more literal sense, that everything is dedicated by someone to something. Everything.

Got too many awards? Put 'em on a plaque. Got too many award plaques? Put them in a stack on the wall. 



The last plaque is the award for the faculty member with the most awards.

Stack of plaques still insufficient? Use them as wallpaper.

If you rearrange the plaques into the correct order a secret passage opens up. Leading to a room with more plaques.

 

Of course it's not all just about the plaques at NJH. They've also got dedicated bricks.

Dedicated bricks are just like dedicated plaques, but with more Old World charm.

 

And dedicated bricks with plaques.

The greatest honor is getting a brick made out of plaques.

 

Since apparently one can run out of bricks to dedicate there's always plant life and local fauna.

The best woody shrubs are always dedicated first.

Dig donors don't trifle with pea gravel and compost, though. They go straight to dedicating buildings. Unfortunately buildings tend to run out pretty fast. So why not dedicate... parts of buildings?

Best damn vital signs room in the country.

 

 

I guess one should look at all the dedications and memorials as a sign of people's trust in the institution to use their resources wisely and for the benefit of future generations, and less as some over the top onstentatious display or kickback to the plaque-making industry. NJH certainly does good work. It is a little distracting, though. And just a little ridiculous.

 

 

"I dedicate this picture in the name of Mars. Ooh isn't that lovely?"

Fighting the MAC Attack

Denver is home to many of the nation’s great medical institutions including National Jewish, its preeminent boutique hospital. Once a center for TB excellence, with the near eradication of TB in the US it has had to move on to other mycobacterium and other lung diseases to remain relevant. It is therefore now also the nation’s best MAC (Mycobacterium avium-complex) hospital, and provides both an award winning breadth of care and an award winning mani-pedi. 

I spent four weeks there to learn all about Mycobacterium: its likes, its dislikes; hopes, dreams; everything. Having a particular interest in tuberculosis I figured I’d get an excellent education on the whole family of bugs in general, with a little bit of TB on the side to keep me interested. Instead, it was pretty much all MAC. There certainly was some M. abscessus masquerading as MAC and an interesting other NTM here or there, but there was essentially no TB and essentially nothing but MAC. MAC, MAC, MAC. Soooo much MAC.

MAC for those unaware, is America’s great undocumented plague. It’s in your jacuzzi, it’s in your shower, it’s in your pool. It’s probably sleeping with your wife. It’s also in the environment as well, and we all likely eat and breath it every day, but for some reason a very small – exceedingly small – portion of the population gets permanently infected with it and develops disease. They are, largely, the Lady Windermere population. There’s also a classic subset of tobacco-smoking, beer-drinking, middle-aged males who get it, but they’re a minority at National Jewish. Instead the Lady Windermeres are thin, tall, middle-aged Caucasian females historically with a tendency towards fastidiousness, but now, all too frequently, a tendency for breast augmentation surgery.* They are what keep NJH’s engines moving.

At Denver’s national Lady Windermere health center and spa, men and women are scheduled for two week stay where they get their MAC treated, their comorbidities managed, and explore all that cosmopolitan Denver has to offer. While there they get the attention of a personal physician dedicated daily to their care for (just about) as long as they want. Consultants, dietitians, and masseuse are readily on hand. The laboratory is ready to run a generous and likely excess number of tests. And top Michelin rated chefs prepare the day’s specials in the facility cafeteria. Although at a hospital patients are not actually hospitalized, but instead spend their nights at any one of many luxurious local accommodations. Throw in a novelty T-shirt and a romantic dinner for two the final night of their stay, and the boutique experience is complete.

Because the NJH MAC ExperienceTM is so long and intensive it is typically the realm of those who can afford to stay in a hotel for two weeks and receive countless tests and procedures. In other words, it is the affluent portion of the Lady Windermeres who make it to Denver for care. Thankfully both cash and credit are accepted. 

As much as I give it a hard time, National Jewish is an amazing place. The thoroughness of care and the research being done there are remarkable. Although it does attract the rich for financial reasons, the poor and underserved are present as well. Moreover the physicians and nurses who work there are dedicated, hardworking, and give much of their lives to their patients. It’s likely entirely unreproducible due to the realities of medical finance in the rest of the world -- and perhaps with some of its excesses this is for the best -- but truly there is no institution that can compare. NJH is a place like no other. At least that's what all the travel agents say.


*It is apparently a well known, but unscientifically established, fact among radiologists that the positive predictive value (PPV) of breast implants for MAC in a woman with right middle lobe and lingular bronchiectasis is high. Similarly, male nipple rings in a chest CT? Diagnostic of HIV.**

**This is not meant to slander HIV+ individuals or men who like nipple rings. Just radiologists. What louts.

Surviving the Colorado Curse

Steep atop Denver International’s darkest crag lies perched, peering, seeing, watching: the cursed stallion.

 

With beady red eyes, bulging blue veins, and a nasty bite he haunts the mile high city. All who fly into Colorado’s newest, great airport are cursed. Cursed with a terrible curse.

I myself was afflicted by the apocalyptic hell beast, and it began the day prior to my arrival – a tribute to its cursiness. An innocents night sledding was ended tragically by my left knee bending in half the way nature never intended. Contributing factors may have included sledding from the top of a three hundred plus yard sledding hill, a small craft advisory, and a near complete lack of prior sledding experience; nevertheless, I was without warning catapulted from my sled and onto my left leg which promptly collapsed like papermache. I additionally somehow got a road rash on my right forearm from the experience, the stallion!

A few days later transgressions continued when I learned my four-week clinical “elective” would actually be four weeks of 12 hour days, tedious dictations, and regular floggings. I had hoped to commute to the hospital via bus or carpool with a friend, but the partial ACL tear, mild MCL sprain, mild LCL sprain, patellar-tibial contusion, and gastrocnemius strain all limited the feasibility of the former while working till the darkest dark of night limited the feasibility of the latter. Eventually I was forced to rent a car for the mere sum of a whole hell of a lot more than advertised.

Paying about 3 times more than listed for taxes, fees, and any lick of insurance coverage was actually one of the few fortuitous decisions I made, however, as within 2 days of acquiring the new car – and 5 days from my original sledding accident – a young woman decided to drive into the side of it. Her initial reaction to pulling out into traffic and hitting my front bumper consisted of “why didn’t you stop?!” as if in the US -- or anywhere on any planet for that matter -- it’s perfectly acceptable to make left hand turns in front of rapidly oncoming automobiles whenever you want. Once her boyfriend pointed out this was insanity she then fell back to exclaiming, “it’s not my fault!” endlessly until the police finally came. My reward for this? A new car and a significantly more expensive new rental car contract. Curse you cursed stallion!

I had to lay low for the next few weeks while the jinx passed, and was thankfully sheltered by my friend Adam and Kate in their basement under an alias. They thankfully are exceedingly generous hosts, Kate’s cooking exceedingly delicious, and their children exceedingly prone to hop merrily in place at the slightest provocation. Aside from some additional difficulty finding dry cleaning – I eventually had to go to Denver’s Korea Town – and a general lack of improvement in range in motion of my knee, things began to blow over. Unfortunately a final blow came the final week when an unknown assailant struck down Dara their slouchier, whiter dog. Some say it was a veterinarian putting an old, good dog down to her final resting place. Others say it was that stallion. And still others say it was the stallion posing as a veterinarian. All that’s clear is that through Dar-Dar’s sacrifice the curse was lifted. Or it just went away on its own. Curses are weird like that. The boys were saddened by the loss of their beloved pet, but after determining she had gone down into the pits of the Earth to doggy heaven and that they’d likely be getting another, younger dog in the future they decided they were ok with their other remaining pets. They eventually returned to hopping, and after working far more than I ever cared to on an elective, I flew home away from the demon's stare.

This post is dedicated to Dar-Dar. The best old, white dog I have ever known. We'll miss you girl.

 En memorum.

This photo is an approximation. I do not actually have a photo of Dara, but she looked kind of like this. But older.

Hullabaloo Quebec, Quebec

Quebec, Quebec. Where Canada's at its coldest, snowiest, and Frenchiest. None of that may be individually or collectively true, but what is true is Quebec, Quebec is the home of the BeaverTail: Canada's contribution to the global obesity arm's race. Watch out America, they got Nutella on their funnel cake. Which they then smashed out and flattened with an iron... 

 If it's two-dimmensional there're less calories right?

Perhaps just as imporant as beaver tails in ensuring Quebec's eternal awesomeness, though, is the Carnaval de Quebec. In part because they have an ice castle, in part because they have Caribou liquor in hollowed out plastic canes, and in part, a very large part, because they have human fooseball.

She kicks like a French-Canadian girl

No, excuse me. Human fooseball on ice. Just in case strapping children to metal poles in freezing wheather wasn't already a good enough idea, they then make them dance. And if they don't want to dance, that's fine. They can feel free to dangle limpy from their chains. Unfortunately we only got to play human ice fooseball twice -- and the second round was prematurely ended by a family from Bufallo who play ice fooseball as if the life of their family pet depended on it -- but it was quite possibly the highlight of my year. Regular fooseball will never again provide the same joy.

A few brief moments struggling to stay upright while people kick balls at my head is not where the Carnival de Quebec ends, however. No, no my ignorant angloophone friends. There're also ice sculptures, toboggan rides, innertube slides, late night dance parties, maple syrup on ice, hottubs on ice -- which I guess are just regular hottubs -- broom hockey, regular hockey on TV probably somewhere, fancy crepes, psychadelic light parades, and snowball castle attack -- where you throw plastic snowballs through each other's ramparts or just at each other. It was awesome because instead of saying, "brrr it's snowing outside, lets stay inside and watch some curling," they said,"brr it's snowing outside, lets strip down and roll in it!"

Lest things get too sexy...

This isn't to say the Carnival de Quebec was all fun and whiskey, though. It also involved showers without shower doors -- why do Europeans insist on this insanity? -- long lines at the border, a few surely Quebecois restaurant owners, escargot, sleeping on the ground using hotel window curtains as blankets, and an indomitable, French-Canadian snow-king-man.

Juiced by a Caribou-fueled rage.

Photographie!