Whew!

I know, it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post, I've been busy and tired and not in the mood to spend my evenings typing instead of sleeping.

Quickie update, I had a student start last week, which is good and not so good. Students take up a lot of time and energy and this one is taking up a bit more than others did. I've been pretty lucky in the past, I've had really good students. Really smart, on the ball, knew their stuff etc. This one seems overwhelmed with the hospital which is somewhat understandable, but she also seems to be missing some academic knowledge. So I've been spending a lot of time teaching. Which is good and not so good. What it is, is time consuming, and a bit exhausting for me, and I'm happy to do it, it's my job as a clinical instructor, but at the same time she should come to the rotation knowing these things. Some pretty basic things. And I should be able to concentrate on teaching her how to take her knowledge and apply it clinically instead of giving her the knowledge itself. But we've talked about my concerns and she knows she's got homework and reviewing to do etc. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt that it's the first week and things will improve.

Working on wedding planning. Which is stressful and cumbersome enough for about 5 posts. Looking into dance floors and dance lessons and ceremony musicians and hair and we've pretty much got the invitations squared away. We just need to get enough of the paper we want and start printing. We're going to do some of it at home and some at Kinkos. But they'll be really nice. We chose a textured paper which kind of looks like watercolor paper and the printer my parents have is great so it really looks like I painted the invitation. It's a nice effect. But it's been A LOT of work typing everything out and laying it out etc. But SO worth it. The finished product REALLY looks nice.

And I get to wear contacts! I'm trying to get used to them again so I can wear them for the wedding, but my dry eyes hurt, and the drops my optho gave me help but aren't great. I dunno. I'm supposed to go for a follow up this week and we'll see. But I've been trying to acclimate all week and sometimes I just feel as if I want to rip my eyeballs out. We'll see, I've got pleanty of time to find the right lens that I'll tolerate.

Enjoying my synagogue community. Being in shul for Shabbat mornings and bonding with people and making friends and adoring their cute kids and spending amazingly pleasant Shabbat late afternoons/evenings and Havdalah at my Rabbi's house. They have a pretty much open invitation most weeks during the summer which is completely amazing of them, and it's so wonderful to share the final hours of Shabbat talking and watching the kids play around, and the adults play basketball and eating and singing and it's just awesome. Something else that will hopefully get it's own post someday.

I'm reading about 4 books at once. A could of Jewish based books in my never ending quest for spirituality and Jewish learning. One in particular is individual stories of Chasidic girls written by an outsider who spend a year living in Crown Heights among the Lubuvitch. It's a really interesting to read about these girls/women and their lives and happinesses and struggles. I'm very much enjoying it. And then there's the neurosurgery book. It's written by a surgeon who works at my hospital which I didn't even realize until later but it's a really cool insiders view into the life and mind of a neurosurgeon and all the things she's experienced in her field. It was a complete accident I got the book, it was a birthday gift, and I found it incredibly ironic that we work together. Go figure! What are the chances!?!?!? And then there are my never ending Real Simple magazines which I LOVE but am a month and a half behind in reading.

And I've started watching all my Star Trek Voyager episodes again. I have almost the entire series on videotape and I truly forgot how much I LOVED that show! YAY for CAPTAIN JANEWAY!!!!

My fatigue has been catching up with me yet again so I've been to a sleep specialist who had me take a sleep study, an overnight study and a daytime nap study. I'll go into the particulars in another post but suffice it to say, they were NOT fun. A kind of cruel and unusual torture actually. And potentially lethal as I almost strangled & mummified myself up in all the wires they attached to me. So it wasn't fun to start with andstill there was more. The biggest thing that really bothered me was the hospital food. A seemingly small thing but it turned out to be a major upset in an already bad day. It was HORRIBLE. Completely inedible. I wouldn't feed that stuff to anyone. Not even Draco Malfoy or Severus Snape. It was really gross. And worse than the expected gross hospital food that I COULD actually eat was that when they admitted me they asked if I had any dietary restrictions/requests. I told them I don't eat meat, I'm a vegetarian. And so for breakfast they served me bacon and eggs and for lunch chicken. Really great vegetarian food. I'm glad I thought to bring myself some snacks, I needed them.

Hmmmm, what else...

Israel. There's too much going on and it's all emotional and stressful and controversial so I won't even talk about it anymore than to simply say this, I Hope and Pray for Peace in Israel and the Middle East and Throughout the World. As Sandra Bullock said in the very last line of Miss Congeniality I Really Do Want World Peace!!!! And that's all I have to say about that.

As a matter of fact that's all I have to say about anything, this meant to be short post is long enough so it's time to stop BLOGging and go do something else with my time.
BYE!