Everyday is Beautiful

Just about every day in New Hampshire is beautiful. Surprisingly, physically beautiful. Rarely does a day go by that I am not in some small way amazed by the natural appeal of the state. For the first couple of months I felt like I was at summer camp minus the frito pie. Now that the snow has come it's starting to feel more like the Mongolian Steppe, but I hear the Mongolian Steppe is lovely this time of year. In either case I still take great joy in daily looking at the San Antonio weather forecast, and smiling that it ain't super sweaty outside.

Here are some pictures of some colorful trees.

A Few Random Photos

A random assortment of pictures.


This is my apartment. As you can see it looks like every other apartment that has ever been mass produced in the standardized manner. You can tell my generic apartment apart from the others because it of all the dirt outside and the paneling which is a creamy beige, not the usual creamy toap. If you are wondering what the inside looks like, just think of your standard apartment and then put my stuff in it. It's really pretty boring.




A storm is a brewing! Long before Irene there were regular rain storms. They sometimes looked like this.



Here's the road and bike path leading up to the hospital which is, as so many things are up here, obscured by trees. Although I do not take this road to the hospital myself, it is the best looking of all commuting road options. Plus one day while biking it I saw a woodchuck running along the path. A gigantic woodchuck.

 This is where I imagine the giant woodchuck lived. On a giant rock in one of the scenic clearings you can find mountain biking the wilderness.

This is just a picture of Megan running with sparklers on the Fourth of July. What could be better than two sparklers at once? Truly she is a lucky girl.

The road to my apartment. Old, cracked, and a major black bear thoroughfare.

The parking lot outside my apartment. Usually there're a lot more turkeys. 

Here's comes the wintertime! And a frozen solid automobile.

And in conclusion here's a link!

When Casual Goes Amok

Boots and brown uniform or shiny shoes and blue uniform. Simple. Back when I was an Air Force resident I never had to decide what to wear, just had to make sure it was clean to wear it. Considering dress clothes are little more than expensive, uncomfortable ways of letting other people know how much money you make, I did not mind this situation. Now, however, I am a civilian and being a civilian physician I am also a professional. Time to don a wider variety of shiny shoes and an endless combination of pressed shirts, ironed slacks, and variably colored ties in order to instill confidence in my patients and trust in my medical decision making. A few hundred dollars later, I do not care for it.

Thankfully due to the inherent infection risks involved with ties doubling as improvised germ swabs, ties are optional and I have opted out. My wardrobe is thus about as comfortable as the uniforms I used to wear. The thought of paying $2 a shirt for a wash and ironing to maintain this wardrobe remains ridiculous to me, but I have accepted this reality and in reality it is better than the equally ridiculous alternative of wasting time doing it myself. The problem lies not directly in the wearing and caring for the clothes themselves, but in deciding which clothes to wear.

Being an infectious disease fellow I am compelled to do other things than just take care of patients and trend their blood sugars. I've got to research in order to maintain my infectious disease street cred. Traditionally this involves absolutely no patient contact, and considering our fellows' office is windowless it currently doesn't even involve human contact. I just sit in my room, in front of my computer, and make research magic. Occasionally if I'm feeling adventurous, or losing my mind from sitting all day in a windowless room, I will take my computer to a study area on the eight floor, but even there I don't interact with any human beings in any official capacity. One would think, therefore, that I could perhaps dress casually for such a job. Maybe try to make myself comfortable for something that is inherently tedious and uncomfortable. And one would be wrong.

Not entirely sure what the reaction would be I tried to slowly ease into a more casual form of dress. First I ditched the pressed shirts for generic collared shirts. Then the slacks for run-of-the-mill khakis. And, finally, khakis for jeans and tennis shoes. That's apparently when I got greedy. Based on the numbered of bewildered responses and frequency of exasperated double takes I had gone too far. Research casual, it turns out, ends somewhere between a casual pair of Dockers and a dress shirt with its sleeves torn off. Maybe corduroy pants and a bolo tie would be ok, I don't know. In either case after about the seventh startled, "oh, jeans!" I decided to return to the khakis and collared shirt look just to stay in good standing. Perhaps when I get enough publications under my name I can dust off the ball cap and sport coat look. Just in case I'm feeling a little douchey.

The Amazing Race for the Amazing Race

This week the Amazing Race started, one of the few television programs I've ever cared to remember to watch. Although never truly as good as the one, single season of Amazing Race: Family Edition, the Amazing Race: Vanilla is still a pretty good time. Especially if you enjoy strangers yelling at each other in taxi cabs. This series' first episode was relatively unremarkable, but I imagine it achieved what it meant to -- that being to identify the snowboarding dudes as dudes, the cocktail waitresses as bimbos, the grandparents as slightly senile grandparents, the Survivor couple as scheming soon to be scoundrels, the male flight attendants as the token gay couple, and the twins, apparently, as not having memories that can last longer than thirty seconds. I imagine the climax of the season will be when either of the brother-sister duo runs the other over in their brand new, special edition 2012 Ford Focus.

The episode reminded me, however, of a friend and I's amazing race last spring in an attempt to have the most amazing movie marathon ever: an Amazing Race amazing movie marathon. What could be better than spending a whole day watching a whole season of Amazing Race? The answer is a whole lot of things, but in San Antonio not much. Being the master planner of this party I was assigned the task of obtaining the videos, and so I devised a plan.

Plan A: Go to Blockbuster and rent it.

Genius in its simplicity. Unfortunately no Blockbuster admitted on their website to owning any Amazing Race DVDs in the entire San Antonio area, and sure enough none of them actually owned them when I visited their stores and demand they show me where they kept them. Blockbuster does own a surprisingly large number of Firefly copies, however, which is why I imagine they went into bankruptcy.

Plan B: Go to another movie rental chain and rent it.

Very similar to Plan A, Plan B was different in that it involved going to other movie rental chains. Not surprisingly it too failed. People do not want to watch Amazing Race in South Texas. Not when there's sweet Tejano music weekly at El Mercado at least! Seriously, what can compete with an accordion?

Plan C: Go to any other store I can think of and buy it.

This plan was admittedly devised on the fly while driving about in my fruitless pursuits of Plans A and B. I visited two separate Best Buys, a Walmart, a Target, and even a used booked store which for whatever reason also sold movies. The end result was no Amazing Race, but a decent book on the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan and, somehow, a 2000 piece puzzle of a castle in Germany.

Plan D: Use NetFlix to rent the series.

Brilliant idea in that NetFlix has multiple seasons of Amazing Race for rental. Terrible idea in that you can only rent one of 3 or 4 DVDs in a season at a time. Not ideal for a one day marathon. Aborted.

Plan E: Use NetFlix streaming video via Laura's giant television.

Laura has a gigantic television. Its size is measured in yards and the weight of it has ruined the foundation on that side of her house. Assuredly inside of all that plastic and hardware there would be a means of connecting directly to the Internet. There was not.

Plan F: Use NetFlix streaming video via Paul and Rachel's Nintendo Wii.

Easy to obtain. Easy to hook up. Already wasted a whole heck of a lot of time previously setting up a NetFlix account for Plans D and E. It seemed pretty flawless to me. It was at this time that we noticed NetFlix does not stream any of the Amazing Race series over its streaming video.

Plan G: Screw it. Let's watch The Pacific instead.

Around back up plans five or six is generally when I consider giving up, and so way gave up after Plan F. Clearly someone, divine or otherwise, did not want us to have an Amazing Race marathon. It likely would have been too amazing. There probably wouldn't have been anywhere to go after that and the rest of our lives would have been lived in listless boredom and indifference knowing our best day was already in our past. In either case we watched The Pacific instead and it was confusing. Too many guys with dark brown hair and average height. Thankfully most of the difficult to tell apart characters got killed off early in the series so by the end I had some idea what was going on. It turns out the war with Japan was rather wet. Or at least that's what I believe the take home message was.

Our amazing race ended in failure, but in the process I learned a lot about Laura and together we learned a lot about ourselves. We didn't win the grand prize, but what we lost we more than made up for in friendship. I wouldn't have run the race with anyone else. Mostly because no one else has a love for the show and a gigantic TV. But also because of the friendship. It is its own reward, especially when you don't have a real reward. Or a television movie marathon to watch.

One Hundred Pictures of Megan's Backside

Labor Day weekend I stopped laboring and went to the White Mountains with my good friend Megan. It was a three day, all-inclusive back country hike and mountain climb three months in the planning accomplished with, it turned out, essentially no planning. We didn't know who exactly was going till the night before, didn't know when or where we were meeting till the day of, had a map that was useless after the first day, planned to hike to a wrong pick up point to ride the wrong shuttle to the wrong parking lot, didn't have enough rain gear, didn't have any sun block, and didn't even bring batteries for some of our flash lights. It was, arguably, the least planned for anything I've ever done in my life. That said, it was a pretty good time. The Presidential Peaks are beautiful, and, her complete inability to plan aside, Megan's a pretty good time to hang out with. I did miss out on coffee cake the last day because of our early morning departure before breakfast, but who needs hot food and extra sleep when there's room temperature granola bars and a rainy hike to the bottom of a mountain at sunrise? I do. I need coffee cake and extra sleep before breakfast. And a back rub. And a piggyback ride to the bottom of the mountain.

The trip itself consisted of hiking to 2 different huts (Lakes of the Clouds and Madison Spring) each well provisioned with itchy wool blankets and a bountiful supply of warm food (molasses bread I learned is the tastiest of breads). We hiked from hut to hut with a brief detour to Mount Washington and spent most of the transit time in varying levels of fog or bright, sunburning sunshine. There were numerous slips and falls on the wet, rocky rocks (some bloodier than others), and regular visits from a mysterious ghost train which would periodically slowly shuffle from out of the fog carrying the departed souls of those it had just run over (or just senior citizens from atop Mount Washington). There were extended conversations with Canadians and extended conversations with New Yorkers, and multiple unsuccessful games of Nertz (Megan would not believe me that 2 man Nertz is not feasible) followed by one forfeited game of checkers. We saw a moose, a lot of fog, and an uncountable number of wet, rocky rocks. And to remember it all I took a lot of pictures. Chiefly of Megan's backside. Enjoy.

Drizzle Storm Irene

This weekend it rained. I am told it was a hurricane.

I was also told I'd lose power for an indefinite period of time during which society would slowly crumble into a dystopian chaos whereby men would be forced to live off of bottled Evian water, Quaker granola bars, and whatever turkeys they could pluck from the side of the road. The American dollar would be replaced with a gold ingot and gasoline generator based barter system where two gasoline generators would be worth roughly two gold ingots or one slightly larger gasoline generator. Trees and power lines would be uprooted and carried great distances by the wind and rain only to be deposited haphazardly across every bridge and intersection forcing people to walk from one side of their small town to the other, many dieing in the process. As events reached an apocalyptic crescendo days would be followed by night, cool temperatures by slightly cool temperatures, and periods of idle boredom by even longer periods of idle boredom. People would start doing puzzles, have thoughtful conversations, or perhaps go to bed early even. I was told things would be different come the storm, and they were. I couldn't get a haircut that day.

I also couldn't go to the gym. Or the grocery store. Or the library. It was raining everywhere so I couldn't go for a bike ride or a hike, and a man -- it turns out -- can only watch so much TV in a day. Especially when it's interrupted constantly with news updates reporting that, yes, it is still raining outside. Everything was closed, and there was no where to go. So lacking better things to do I did what any sane person would do and I cleaned. Vacuuming my apartment came far too easily so I pressed on to wash the shower, do the dishes, and fold a load of laundry. It was ugly and I'm not proud of it, but I did it. I also over turned some cars and a lit a tire fire in the middle of the city, but in truth I do that most weekends.

I got lucky. The storm was nothing more than a passing inconvenience for me whereas, from what I hear, the entire state of Vermont was covered in water which was only followed by mud which was only followed by, I would assume, raccoons and other varmints. And so I get to write this blog post now with full electricity, a full fridge, and pantry still full of Quaker granola bars and fresh plucked turkeys. That's two natural disasters down, bring on the volcanoes.

Losing Power: A Personal Experience and Powerful Metaphor for the Libyan Revolution and Fall of Muammar Gaddafi

Last week I did not expect for my power to abruptly be turned off. Last week I even less expected for it to be turned off for 5 days. But so it happened, and I lived to the tell tale!

My epic tale of adventure and pre-industrial era existence began quietly enough last Thursday with my going off to work as I am want to do not knowing that upon my return later that afternoon, none of my light switches would work. The AC was dead. The refrigerator was warm. The internet was kaput. I was sad but not terribly surprised as a few weeks prior the utility company had sent me a vague yet threatening letter to call them to set up my electricity under my name. I had promptly done so, but calling it appeared was only part of a process which was to include also obtaining a "notarized signed land lord statement" which was... well they didn't really tell me. They also didn't tell me when I needed to get this in by. Just that if I didn't I'd one day find my power taken away and my pets heads falling off. Unfortunately the threat was sufficiently vague that I was insufficiently motivated to aggressively pursue this "notarized signed land lord statement." I sent an email, made a phone call to a voice mail it seems no one listens to, and that was that. A few weeks passed by and there I found myself, at about 19:00 in the early evening standing in the front of my apartment with no lights.

The next day I knew I had little time to get the holy paperwork taken care of so I spent a sizable portion of my work day making repeat phone calls to a voice mail it seems no one listens to. Finally around lunch time I left a message presenting clear, specific instruction of what to fax and who to fax it to. This was not done. Finally around 16:00 I finally got a hold of someone in the apartment office and they agreed to do the fax. I called the electric people and they said, yeah, didn't get the fax yet but our fax people leave at 16:00 so it'll probably have to wait till next week.

So I was left to survive the weekend. I had to resort to trapping local small game, burning small scraps of wood to boil a pot of water to run a steam turbine to power my AC, wrapping myself in pelts to keep warm at night, and driving around town to find sufficient internet access. This was unfortunately a fairly rainy period of time in New Hampshire so it involved a fair amount of running to and fro from my car to the library and back again. While I still had left over hot water for my shower things weren't too bad.

Then came Monday; things started getting annoying. I had just been on call the whole weekend which limited some my sleep but also limited some the time spent staring into the darkness that had become my apartment. I once again tended to the phones this time calling the utility people who told me it sometimes takes four hours for the fax people to talk with the not-fax people to coordinate the resumption of services. I should call back around lunch to see if the fax had been received and processed. Lunch came and, no, the fax had not be received. In either case, I was told, my fax would have been deficient a number of very important pieces of information like my phone number. Which I had already told them numerous times over the very phone whose number I was providing them with. I nevertheless called the landlord, they said they did it, I said send it again.

The next day. More rain, less hot water. Today I learned they had received my fax! But it was deficient. Despite being told specifically what to have faxed over, I was not told sufficiently what to fax over as the list provided was missing, apparently, my move in date. Without this well the thought of giving a powerless person power was just plain ridiculous. I needed to send a third fax. Ok, the rules are rules and although it seems the people at both the electric company and my apartment are questionably competent at their jobs I had myself gotten into this mess largely because of my own laziness. I expressed my great dissatisfaction about being told a number of different fax requirements by a number of different reportedly fax-knowledgeable people who apparently all failed the fax portion of the standardized electric company customer service test. Anyway, send fax number three!

That night I was starting to get a little tired of my relatively boring existence (it seems there's not too much to do in an unlit apartment alone after dark) and a little frustrated with the process. The next day I would become even more frustrated when I would call once more and find, fax number four: lost in the universe! Once again the Great New England Fax Monster ate my fax and left me with nothing but tears and an uncooperative, inefficient system entirely indifferent it seemed to my plight. The solution offered, send another fax! I protested, asked why the hell did I need to send yet another fax, pleaded, begged, perhaps cried, and finally it was made known to me there was another way. Just say I'd take care of the billing issue myself -- which unbeknownst to me was apparently the underlying problem all along (dividing up which part of the bill I owed and which part my apartment manager owed) -- and they'd flip the switch. But not until the next day. Once more I protested, begged, pleaded, cursed the stars in the sky, and perhaps shouted a few profanities and after a brief placement on hold I was told they'd see if the switch flipper guy could fit me in that day. And, gloriously, he did. I returned home Wednesday evening to sweet beautiful power. Five days later.

I honestly did not much mind not having electricity for the better part of the week. The lack of internet was inconvenient but I enjoyed visiting other parts of town to obtain it. I certainly didn't like the lack of hot water, and a hot stinky fridge is not very kind to the pocket book or the senses, but all in all it wasn't too bad. I was nevertheless surprisingly happy by the resumption of electricity. Although one can get by in the darkness with the assistance of a head lamp for guidance, it is amazing the pleasure of getting by with just the flick of a switch. And a fridge fold of cold drinks is far more satisfying than a fridge full of lukewarm drinks. Fortunately there were no slap-stick falls in the night during the week and once I had light again my life resumed its usual humdrum pace. The moral of this story clearly being: if the electric company sends you a vague yet threatening message do what they say else they'll turn off your power and just generally not give a shit.

I think one of the worst parts of the whole experience, however, was the end of one particularly long phone conversation with the electric company which went something like this....

Customer Service: ... [finished explaining instructions] ... alright is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: ... [summarized the instructions] ... is that it?
Customer Service: ... [resummarized the instructions] ... ok have I answered all your questions? Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Me: No I think I got it. I'll call tomorrow morning as instructed.
Customer Service: ... [resummarized the instructions again] ... and that's it. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Me: No, I'm good. Thanks. I'll call tomorrow.
Customer Service: ... [resummarized the instructions yet again] ... Have I answered all your questions? Is there anything else I can help you with?
Me: No more questions. Thanks for the help.
Customer Service: ... blah blah blah [nonsense] ... Have I answered all your questions? Is there something else I can help you with?
Me: No.
Customer Service: ... [long boring goodbye thanking me for my business] ... [more scripted nonsense wishing me a good evening] ... [an insufferable amount of time later] ...
Me: *click.*

And that's how I survived the Great Energy Crisis of 2011. By mostly avoiding my home.

The end!

Or...

To be continued!

Hurricane Irene's churning up the Eastern seaboard, and she's angry I'm told. And bringing with her great storm surges, powerful winds, drenching downpours, plagues of locusts, the death of every first born. Although I am every bit convinced she will die out an unexciting death once fully over land as all hurricanes have ever done, I am nevertheless a bit concerned my beloved power will be leaving me again shortly. I'm told New Hampshire power lines are mostly made of bamboo kabob skewers taped together with discount duct tape. Let us pray. For my power.

Oh, and this has been a powerful metaphor about the Libyan Revolution and fall of Muammar Gaddafi.