way to coma!

the weather man says it's happening

we're gonna be
snowed in!
snowed in!
snowed in!
-Snowed In/Cruisin', Joel Plaskett Emergency

I'm meant to be in the air now, but I'm not. I could be fooled though. Looking out out the window, I can't see anything but white, and the snowflakes are blowing in a fairly horizontal fashion. Jeez, Mother Nature, it's Easter! C'mon, it's not supposed to be a blizzard at Easter! Isn't March supposed to be "In like a Lion and out like a Lamb" or something? What's supposed to happen in the middle? The Lion eats the Lamb? Who knows, but no planes are coming in today and our little town is living up to its nickname of "Cancelgar".

It shouldn't be too big of a deal actually. Courtney is at the hospital until tomorrow anyhow and the first shift of my emergency rotation doesn't start until Tuesday night at 11pm. My problem is that when plans change like this I have a hard time adapting. You end up having to go the airport every couple of hours to see if you can get on the next flight, and then come home and unpack some of your stuff to keep yourself occupied until the next chance to get out. It's hard for me to deal with, and it just ends up being wasted time.

On a more positive note, we had a very nice visit with our family friends the McDougalls this weekend. Hayley is on the road to recovery. I have to say she sure is more fun to hang out with when she's conscious and lucid. Despite both sets of parents wishing that maybe there were some actual (grand)kids this weekend, we really enjoyed maintaining the reputation of our generation and decorating cookies, sleeping on the floor, playing pranks and generally acting like kids ourselves. I pretty much dominated during the candy hunt this morning.

don't panic! the elevator will not fall.

I opened my eyes - and all the sea was ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.
-Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

Internal medicine in Nelson is legit. It's all Interesting Stuff while I'm there, but I don't have to be there for my whole life. A very good elective.

My weekend started at around 1:00pm on friday and I drove home to pack up my stuff for the lake. I had hoped I would make it out to the cabin while I was home and for some reason it was ridiculously easy to convince my parents to go out there for the night. I think maybe if my mom had known the snow was still pretty deep and the entire lake was frozen over, she may not have been quite as keen. I went swimming when we went last year around this time. Regardless, it only took about an hour to walk in, and twice that long for the fire to warm up the cabin to a point where we weren't seeing our breath, but once we settled in it was quite cozy.

Here's my best Luigi impression on ice.

night lights

Shit yeah, I got my technique down and everything. I don't be ticklin' or nothin'.
-Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

I had a good 1st day of my elective. I know it was a good day because it started with an 89 year old gentleman giving me a back massage after I was done taking his history. I'm not sure how it happened really, except the guy is 89 years old and he told me to sit down and look the other way, so I did. I found out later that this is his hobby. He usually gives 25-30/week. So I'm not so special.

Nelson is filled with interesting characters like this. The upside is the massages. The downside is they almost uniformly will not take any medication they are prescribed. Which can make practicing medicine a little tricky, as it relies heavily on giving people medications.

More updates later this week.

this is not here

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one
-Aristotle

Things have settled here quite a bit since last time I posted. Hayley was discharged from hospital last week. She is still in the process of recovery, and is having the same issues with her head pain as she did before she was admitted to hospital, but is at home in Vernon with her family.

I'm also at home now, but not with my family. They are in Florida, Edmonton and Kingston, and I'm here enjoying the view, the fireplace and the crisp sounds of the audio system. I'm starting an elective tomorrow with an internist (an internal medicine specialist, not an intern, nor an intensivist) in Nelson. I don't really have much of a clue what I'll be doing, but whatever it is, I imagine it will be much different from my last two weeks of Dermatology + Ophthalmology, which pretty much comprised of me, sitting in a corner, mouth agape, watching the doctors I was working with light cigars with hundred dollar bills. Not actually, of course, but there are some specialities where the amount of money earned becomes quite apparent. Some it was actually quite interesting though and I never had to sleep in a hospital bed. I had some time to plant my feet on the ground again. It was good.

It's also good to be back home again in the spring time. It's warmer than I remembered, and dirtier. I've had the small town vs city debate so many times with myself or others. And it always strikes me whenever I come home, how different it is here. Sometimes I look at the kids and wonder what it would be like to grow up in a small town before I remember. Somehow it seems like home and also foreign....I've been living in the city for too long. I think the thing for me is that in Vancouver, the people you see on the street seem like characters. I remember once as a teenager visiting the city and just being totally mesmerized by all the people and the cars, like I was in a movie. It's nice to be home and see real people again.