"I Wanna Be a Dumbcharger"

is one of my favorite Guided by Voices song titles. Don't know why.

I get lots of condolences from my posse at the bfc for not getting into med school. Last night at the funding committee meeting, Scottosaurus showed up slightly inebreated. He's quite open and logical about his motives and reasons that he occasionally wants to numb himself out. In some ways he's perhaps the nerdiest person I have ever met. I love this guy! Last night he told us he was getting drunk so he could sleep. He's not sleeping because of anxiety. He's anxious because the clinic's bookkeeper cadre is disintegrating. The bookkeeping group has always been the vital but weak link in clinic functioning. As funding committee, we are supposed to be concerned and somewhat responsible for remedying this state of affairs. The funding committee at this point is down to 3 active members. And one of us is leaving in the fall. Crisis and more crisis!

Last Friday night was weird. Winston and I went to a Scott Miller show over in south Berkeley/north Oakland (I'm not totally clear on where Berkeley ends and Oakland begins. Nobody really is). The venue turned out to be the top floor of basically a small house. The show was in what would be the living room if the venue was being used as a house and not a performance venue (which it may very well be when no one is performing). So I'm sitting in a folding chair in a living room of a funky house 5 feet away from my favorite musician of all time, listening to him wail away, doing solo versions of songs I have listened to hundreds of times, songs which make up the soundtrack of my inner life. His wife is hanging out in the ajoining (dining) room, watching over their cute little blond haired daughter. After his set, Scott hangs out with the "audience" (which is maybe like 8 or 10 people), watching the other performer (Anton Barbeau, his good bud) and occasionally going up to help with vocals. He's sitting right next to me, sipping a Sierra Nevada. I recognize another member of the Loud Family in the audience. I know who some of these people are from my years as a fan. Weird. I don't really have anything to say to my hero, I put my hand on his back and tell him "nice set." I'm witnessing the trailing off of a Fine Career in alternative pop music. He shoulda been huge, I'm sure he gets told that all the time.

Anyway, we don't stay that much longer, Winston seems uncomfortable, it's clear everybody else there knows each other, we're just unknown oddballs. I don't feel like trying to horn in on any conversations. Wow. Since 1986. Since 1986 I've been using his music as a crutch and a balm. Where does time go?

Hay there

I don't mean this to sound like the wimpy cop out it is, but it has been a weirdly busy week and I promise to write more more later. Not that I think anyone desperately misses me, but I don't want the want the blog to wither and die either. It's late -I gotta go to bed or I will be senile tomorrow.

happy lab week!

What I'm up to: went to New Mexico (or as I think of it for some reason, "New Maxi-go!", the product-placement version of the state)last week to "shoot" my "video" "project" which is a "documentary" on my friend Marion as a sort of "ethnographic study" of her 15 year involvement in the "transgender community" as an electrologist in "Northern New Maxi-go!" for my "homo-anthro" class.

Though it's prolly just as much an excuse to get a video camera and Final Cut Express and "fool around" with that (which I've wanted to do for a while).

gratitude

...is a good idea. and forgiveness.

i don't think that life is worse, but i think that the problems have changed. the threats have changed.

the likelihood of being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger is very low at this point.

but the threat of dying in an automobile accident is very real.

we've cured diseases associated with poor sanitation, but now pollutants are killing us, or damaging us.

we've been saved from a life of toil hunting and gathering...

...but now we toil in hospitals, phone centers, or Wal Marts.

i read a good chunk of the book

about a month ago at the Public Library down the street from the house Winston grew up in (and his mom still lives in). What a perfect little art deco library, I have to say! I was there killing time while Winston was at the gym (the Y in his old neighborhood). It makes total sense. I heard Mr. Easterbrook talk about his book on NPR's "Tech Nation" (I think that was the show). He's a good writer; I know his stuff from the articles he's written for Wired mag.

re: things getting better

That is the subject of a recent book called The Progress Paradox by Greg Easterbrook. The thesis is that, though life for most people in the world has gotten increasingly better over the past 50 years we persist in thinking we are worse off than we were in the past and that the future will bring increasing crises and doom. The prescription for this malaise: gratitude and forgiveness.

at the clinic last night

Scottosaurus told me a story about a friend of his who tried to get into med school for 10 years. She would apply to med schools every year, take the mcat every few years. Around year 8 she moved to Tucson because she heard that U of Arizona usuaqlly doesn't get enough qualified applicants (they only take in-state applicants) to fill their entering class. She toiled away in a UofA micro lab for a year to qualify for residency. Still didn't get in. Then she heard that Italian med schools are good and like to admit Americans. She spent the summer taking an intensive course in Italian, then applied. She got accepted! But meanwhile that same year, some Italian politician made a big stink about how many rich Americans were taking up places in Italian med schools that should rightfully be used to train docs who were going to stick around. So that year the Italian government drastically reduced the number of student visas awarded to Americans. Guess what? Hers was one of the visas that got cancelled. Heartbroken, she gave up on med school after that.

So anyway I'm down to 1 school that hasn't rejected me. Oh well, it was an interesting (if costly) experiment. Time to focus on
the nursing program at SF State.

don't leave your bike(s) ...

... in places like that that aren't secure. If Winston can't bring your bike back home with you, then don't ride with him. That is so passive aggressive. I think he hates your bike, maybe hates you, and that's why he does that.

Hate is an emotion that we don't have to scratch too deeply to find.

It was really warm for the last several days. It got up "officially" to 78, but my thermometer said 85 on the back porch.

Today is a more reasonable and rational 60. 60 and rain. That's more springlike.

Work has been tiring. ABM is all stressed out for her work and her boss. So, that's bleeding off into arguments between us too. Blah.

When you were here

I remember briefly talking about how although the world was going to hell in a handbasket in many ways, many things have improved greatly. Make a list of everything you think is better now than was before. For extra credit make a list of everything that is better now than it probably ever will be again. Why is this time a good time to be walking around on earth.

What made me think of this reading yet another Gay marriage rant in the Expositor and remembering how when I was really little, how we never saw interacial couples on TV or black people in commercials.

I think I would take a gamble on the future, but I'd never want to be born any earlier in the past.

I'm betting it has nothing to do

with infectious disease. Maybe the rich plastic surgery patients getting tummy tucks etc don't want to sit next bald headed cancer patients because it makes them uncomfortable. On the other hand, maybe it is somewhat infection related - our most demanding hypochondriacs don't like mixing with the sickies. They want the first appointment in the morning or afternoon so "they aren't exposed to other people's germs." I always want to say, what about your germs that some immuno-suppressed patient has to be exposed to? And why should some weak elderly, 90 year old have to wait longer than you? They just don't have a clue. Some of our patients are so self-absorbed you wouldn't believe it. And they never fucking die of anything.

speaking of hypes

last weekend my bfc partner in crime and I were finally and emphatically told to stop going through and consolidating the needle exchange sharps, as it represents not only a legal liability but also sets a bad example for other members of the collective. It's hard to explain the appeal that "binning" had for us; junkies can't just throw out syringes neatly bound with rubber bands like we want them; they hafta throw all sorts of non-biohazard non-sharps shit out mixed in with the needles. It costs big bucks to get the biohaz trash carted off; those ingrates cost us $$$! But more than the high of saving scarce clinic resources, there was the thrill of doing something mildly dangerous. Like handling poisonous snakes.

ironically

the typical bike (and bike part) thief is the typical client we're serving over at the bfc-- a junkie. They often unload their bikes at flea markets and used bike joints that don't ask questions. There's one over in Berkeley that I recently heard about that I should check out to see if any of my bikes are there.

so I'm thinking

"that doc shares a suite with Dr O; there are 'unusual' patients coming and going through there all the time (I know, I was one); and besides, Davies is (as Jesse put it) 'HIV capital of the world.' I mean, if the guy's concerned about his patients sitting next to AIDS patients, he shouldn't be practicing here!

whiny doctor

Jesse, the specimen handling manager here, who is leaving for a job at Stanford in 2 weeks which bums me out because I really like him, told me the plastic surgeon down the hall wants lab phlebots to go to his office to draw his rich plastic surgery patients because "he doesn't want them having to hang around the regular Davies patients in the lab waiting room."

Sorry to hear

you are feeling down, Dana. Fortuna's wheel will turn for you soon, I predict. You are just in a slump.

all the snow has disappeared, and their is open water around the point. Kind of amazing how fast it melts considering it was like feet thick just two weeks ago. Ice broke up on Lake Manitou and came careening down the river in large slabs. I'm surprised it doesn't jam up somewhere along the way. So is there any kind of visible change in the spring in California. Mac should be getting leaves shortly.

I finally got my histology assignments back from last OCTOBER. And I was pretty pissed because I thought the grading looked rushed and arbitrary. There was nothing but check marks here and there and no comments or explanations for points taken off. I got a %78 overall for the assignments and last time I think it was 93-95% or something. But I did better than expected on the final exam so, so that helped.

I got my first blood bank assignment back an it was 110%. so that cheered me. But it wasn't an easy assignment to do because I just don't recall any of it. It's like starting over. It's like when you find an old flashlight or walkman you threw in a box a long time ago and forgot about and you open it up years later to find the batteries have leaked and the terminals are all coroded and you attempt to clean it up and see if you can make it work again. That is what my brain feels like in this course.

The seagulls and ducks came first and then the sandhill cranes. I haven't seen a robin yet, but heard they are around. When Carolyn had croup we were sitting out on the deck at 2am in our jammies and winter coats, so the cold air could help her larynx. She was making that croupy bark sound and crying and then we noticed that every time she would do that, some ducks in the river would quack, and she stopped crying and started laughing.
I had my first cold of the year. Didn't think I could get through the whole with winter. Coincidentally it was when I stopped drinking that carrot juice.

Carolyn says hi. She lost another front tooth and looks like a little vampire.

I'm totally Poped out these days. There are few news stories I could less interested. that and Charles and Camilla.

Since it's too warm to ski and too cold to canoe, I've been painting a little. Carolyn and I went swimming in Espanola last weekend. Went to McDonalds despite having just watched seen Supersize Me. That was hilarious. I can't believe his liver enzymes got that bad just from Big Macs.

I can't believe you live in this cool, enlightened place and yet their are these zealous bike thieves lurking everywhere. What is with that? How long does it take to dismantle and steal a bike? Don't anyone say anthing if they see someone doing that or walking down the street with part of a bike? Where do they resell them?

the building

in which the switchboard is located is right next to a Wendy's, so I stopped in and said at the counter "I'd like a bowl of human finger chili, please." But they looked at me blankly, possibly because they had heard similar remarks about 85 times that day, so i sheepishly added "ok, not really, I really just want a medium fry and a large coke."

so finally he comes, and the night

degrades from there; at one point I almost walk out on him.

The next morning I take the bus over to where my bike was chained up. Yeah, the frame and wheels were still there (they were chained up), but thieves had taken my seat, seatpost, and handlebar bar-ends. I had to ride it home without a seat, which is very annoying. I blew up with rage at Winston, called him every bad thing I could think of, told him I never wanted to see him ever fucking again. Ok, so I'm often a victim of my own stupidity, but I don't need to be a victim of bullying too. I can't stand it. I'm such a fucking loser, I really want to die. I'm just been crying and moping a lot for the last couple days.

thanks for checking in, Scott!

I haven't felt like blogging much lately because of depression, and having no internet at home. Nothing's happening on the med school front, and work is just more abuse. I keep applying to jobs, just to see what happens, and I don't even get replies from them. I feel like nobody wants me. Meanwhile, on Sunday, I had ridden my bike to S.F.S.I. retraining; when training ended for the day, it was raining really hard, but it was like, eh, so I'll get wet. Winston calls and insists on picking me up. I tell him I can't leave my bike there, that I'll ride it to Civic Center Bart where I know it'll be safe. He starts giving me all this crap about how I'll still be wet and get water all over the interior of his car, just on and on, so finally I said I'd chain it up in front of the coop grocery store up the street, a 2 minute ride. I'm up therre waiting for him to pick me up for a long time.

I saw that story about the finger...

Wow. Yuck.

The party for Ed sounds like it went real well. That was nice of you to go to all that trouble for him.

Things are quiet here. I have got another potential renter for one of the apartments on victor street. This time the first floor. Hope it comes through. I need the money. In the meantime I am trying to quickly finish the repairs so she can move in.

Will hopefully have a signed rental contract today.

Hopefully.

I'll be glad to sell that house. I'm not looking forward to being a landlord. I can barely keep one house taken care of.