The beauty of being on nights is getting to watch ridiculous TV, guilt free.  The guilty pleasure of the evening is RepoGames.  It is fantastic. 

That is all I have to say tonight.

I have a super-good excuse for not blogging for a long time... first, I was on vacation.  Then, every time I tried to get on my blog, it made my internet stop working.  I have no idea why.  Our tech guy is working on it.  For now, I come to you from a loaner computer. 

I've made enough progress on my "secret" project to give you a little update. There are still some finishing touches that need to be put on, but I'm not sure when they'll get done, so here ya go! We left off with this...

Any idea what it is yet?

Taking shape...

My garage became a workshop... car got booted to the driveway.  And I bought a circular saw.  And still have all my fingers...

Figure it out yet?  About this time I realized attempt #1 was too small... So back to Lowes I went to buy more supplies, with a new set of plans.

The newer, larger version...

I hope you've figured it out by now...

Painting some trim (which hasn't been put on yet...)

Primed

Painted, roofed, and (mostly) shingled.

Did you know asphalt shingles have fiberglass in them?  My hands do now...

This will be its home.  I didn't want it to sit on grass because I didn't want the bottom to sit in soggy grass when it rains, making it wet and rotten...

So I dug a hole.  And saved the grass to be moved elsewhere in the yard.

Then filled said hole with rocks, that I picked up from other places in the yard.  It took LOTS of rocks...

Hole full of rocks.

Then I put Jake's new house on the rocks... Andddddd I'm done!

Almost... I still have to put his name and house number (yes, I do realize how ridiculous I am) on it, and add the trim (which has already been painted).  I really need a miter saw to do the job correctly...

So there you have it... my first (and second) attempt at dog house construction.  The first one I started that was too small is going to another dog (who will fit better inside).  If being a doctor doesn't work out, I could probably make a career of making dog houses...

I think I'll stick to doctoring.

When I was in college, we worked on a lot of biochemistry lab reports and papers in pairs.  We divided the responsibilities, and mine usually included formatting the paper.  This involved playing tables and images, deciding on the number of columns, layout of the title, colors, paragraph headings, etc.  And, invariably, no matter how early we started working on any given paper, we were ALWAYS up at 4 AM the night before it was due, perfecting things.  And I was always tinkering with formatting.  And by tinkering, I mean obsessing.  And by obsessing, I mean yelling at the computer, throwin goldfish at it, getting a high squeaky voice, and sometimes cursing (gasp!).  Amy, Tom, anyone wanna back me up on this???  Formating was the bain of my existance, but when it was done and right, it was the difference between a crap paper and a work of biochemical beauty. 

I'm heading to Atlanta for the American Society of Sports Medicine annual meeting soon, and am working on a poster to present there as we speak.  I have about half of the text written.  But I can't do more because I CAN'T PICK A COLOR SCHEME!!!!  You'd think that would be the least of my worries, given that I need to have it done by, say, tonight.  But I have to get it right! 

The writing part it pretty easy, and ultimately pretty worthless.  Being as I've been to many a poster presentation sessions before, I have an idea of how they work.  People walk up to your poster (because it's beautifully formatted, and stands out), then read the title, and then say, "Huh, interesting.  Tell me about your case".  And then you tell them while their eyes glance over the colors and pictures and any words you put in bold and/or red. 

In reality, all that really matters is the formatting.  And having an interesting case to start with that people want to hear more about. 

I'm off to sort through more potential colors... I'm on green and blue right now... it's a possibility.

This weekend, I and 6 other residents ventured to Cleveland, OH to take part in the Ohio/Michigan Tough Mudder.  Never heard of the Tough Mudder?  Check it out at http://www.toughmudder.com/!  Basically, it's a 10-12 mile (I think ours was about 11) military style obstacle course with over 20 obstacles including walls, ice baths, barbed wire, and electric shocks.

We all drove out the night before because, really, who wants to wake up, drive 4 hours, then run 11 miles?  No one, that's who. 

The forecast was overcast, high of 60, and chance of rain.  60 sounds nice, until you are trying to warm up after jumping in a sub-freezing fluorescent colored ice bath.  Then it sounds cold. 

The instructions told us to arrive at the parking lot 2 hours before our scheduled start time.  That sounded a little excessive, but we did it and we glad we did!  The line for the buses to take us to the course was HUGE.  They had school buses in groups of 5 shuttling people the 15 minutes from the parking lot (of a huge factory of some sort) to the course.  There, were proceeded to check in, get marked with our numbers, check in bags, and try to warm up.  Then it was a short climb over the first of many walls to the start line... (yes, you had to climb a wall just to get to the start...)

Then we huddled with about 600 other people in our wave, said the Tough Mudder oath, and were off!  To summarize the next 4 hours, it went a little like this...

Run through mud.
Climb over something.
Run through water.
Jump 25 feet off a platform in to water.
Go through a tube.
Climb over something slippery.
Get electrocuted
Run through mud
Climb over something
Crawl under something.
Run through water.
Climb over walls.
Run through mud.
Get electrocuted.
Finish.

Here's the evidence that there was mud!

This weekend it was 70 degrees, I was outside all day trimming trees, building things, and playing in the yard.

Today, it snowed.

Huh?

Granted, they were just flurries, didn't stick, and the ground didn't even get wet.  But, STILL.  It was cold enough for water to fall frozen, from the sky.  Not acceptable for April.  I'm already in spring mode and that's how I want to stay.  I think it's supposed to warm up by this weekend.  Hopefully this cold snap will break and all falling water from here on out will be melted. 

And since I slacked and didn't post on Sunday or Monday, I will give you a once sentence synopsis of the last two days...

Asphalt shingles wedge in your hands like tiny needles.

I've been trying to slowly give Jake (oh, BTW, I got a dog, in case you didn't know.  His name is Jake.) a little more freedom at night and when I'm out running errands.  So I took a jaunt to Lowe's (like my 5th of the day) and the grocery store, and left Jake out on his own.  I came home to this...

One more rotation is in the books.  Intern year is now officially 10/13ths over.  In medicine, it's important to be precise.

I also head to the wonderful world of non-call block starting tomorrow.  Meaning no call, free weekends, upcoming vacation, and not very many late nights.  It's gonna be awesome.  I've got a lot to do in that time...  here's whats on the list for this weekend.

Finish secret project
Paint kitchen ceiling and hallway
Paint deck lights
Trim giant tree in front yard
Pick up stones and plant grass along fence
Weed
Pull up old bushes
Plant new bushes
Hang pictures
Do laundry
Finish poster for presentation

That shouldn't take much time......