WRROooooooowwww

Houston Grand Prix 2007. The American Le Mans series. Cool, actually innovative cars going ripshit fast for two hours and forty five minutes. The race was preceded by hours and hours of ancillary activities - celebrity go kart racing (predictably enough, a Shuttle pilot won), driver signings (I got my hat signed by all four Audi drivers) and more junior racing series races. Hubbie and I went for all three days and got pit passes for the Champ car race today.

Now, let me tell you what my problem with Champ car races - one company makes
all of the engines. Likewise, one company makes all of the chassis. Where's the innovation? No incentive exists to push technology further in races like these. Bah, humbug.

Give me the ALMS! Each team has a different ride using different technology. And the technology makes a huge difference. Audi runs a twelve cylinder diesel. (Diesel! In a race car! How cool!) Mazda has run a rotary Wankel engine in the past. Acura (Honda) just entered the series this year - and unfortunately they beat the Audi team. My boys - Dindo Capello & Allan McNish - came in third. The second Audi team came in something like fifth.

Anyway, I loved the races. Fun fun fun! Some pictures below:


The Audi drivers. From back to front - Allan McNish, Dindo Capello, Emanuele Pirro & Macro Werner.
The diesel Audi (aka the TDI) and the Acura. The Acura eventually won. Bastards. The TDI is eerily quiet - like a whisper compared to everything else out there. It reminded me of a ghost... gliding by on a whispery cloud of air. So cool.


The Corvettes were the meanest sounding machines. Meaner than the Panoz, who took the cake last year. Last year's Panoz still sounded cooler than the 'Vette - deeper, angier, more thuddy.

Pit lane as set up for the Le Mans series. See, the gas caps were on the wrong side of the car for the Houston race. They're on the correct side of the car for 24 hours of Le Mans... just not Houston. (Houston's place on the racing pecking order is fairly clear - WAY below the 24 hour races.) So the teams have these long arms to refuel the cars. Pretty cool, huh? And a nifty picture.

6p - 2a

I've worked a new shift today - the 6pm to 2am shift, aka the 'swing' shift. I think I have mixed feelings about this new entity in my life.

Pros:

• Night nurses
• Night charge nurses (Nell don't take no shit, baby!)
• I'm the 'help' so I'm never alone, i.e. there is no part of the shift when there isn't at least one other doctor with me.
• It's a really fast shift, mostly 'cause of bullet #3.
• The shift runs during prime time - lots of actual pathology seems to show up in the evening. That's always fun. ;)
  

Cons:

• Night nurses - those ladies don't do anything they don't want to. If they disagree with me? Guess what, my orders won't be carried out for hours...
• 6p - 2a pretty much means I don't get to see the husband all day. A HUGE bummer.
• Getting home at 2a as a non-driver in Houston. Cabs are slow, and the shitty drivers work the graveyard shift. My cabbie tonight? Clueless. And he didn't have change. Sheesh.
• Feeling like you're abandoning the overnight doc. 'Cause, guess what, you are. When the swing shift doc leaves, the overnight doc is all alone for the next 6 hours. And they are a painful six hours. Tonight I ended up staying a little late to prevent unloading a procedure onto the overnight guy. Granted, it was a minor procedure, but still... Overnights suck, and I don't wanna make his worse.

Mostly, I think con #2 is the most disturbing. I like my husband and I like seeing him. This shift doesn't allow that. So I guess the cons will win and I'll sigh every time I see an evening swing shift on the schedule... but at least the silver lining is decent.

Baseball's back any my boy is hitting!

Hey now, hey now, my baseball's back!

Yeah, ya know I got the feeling!
Yeah, ya know my boys are stealing!

Hey now, hey now, my 'Stros are back!

I've mentioned before that I like baseball... just a few times in the past. (Really, I'm not repetitive or anything.) But it's true! This year's Astros will, yet again, keep us on our toes all season, I'm thinking. Yeah, our first couple of games (uh, make that series) sucked. We were swept in our season opener and didn't do much better in the next set against the Cards.

But then we went to Phillie, and hope dawned anew. Carlos Lee, the dude we spent WAY too much money on, slammed out three homers in one game. One of those homers was a grand slam. (Side note, I don't care who ya are, grand slams are cool. And they must suck so much for the pitcher 'cause they are so rare, but so damn devastating when they happen...) And my boy Morgan (MoMo! MoMoMoMoMoMoMoMoMo! I so have an old married lady crush on that man.) finally started hitting 'round about then.

After that, hubbie and I went to see our boys for their first home game since the sad sack season opening badness. We won. Not only did we win, our offense actually showed up. Lance still isn't hitting, but that'll just take time. The opposing team - the Marlins, if you must know - were still scared enough of Mr. Berkman to intentionally walk him. Take that!

Keeping the goodness coming, my very under-appreciated and very much loved Astros shortstop, Adam Everett, is getting some good press. ESPN's Crasnick recently wrote this article praising our resident defensive genius.

I think my 'Stros are going to keep repeating the pattern of the first two weeks of the year. One or two really bad series, then brilliance, the a return to suckitude. But I think the brilliance may just outweigh the suck enough to keep us into contention well into September.

Now sit back, relax, make some popcorn and watch me eat my words.

Hopefully we run away with the division... but we all know that's not what I mean.

PS - Dave of blogography.com actually reads my blog! How cool is that?

Work is... uh, work

So that's why I haven't posted.

But in other news, I've had the most wicked case of gastro (i.e. stomach flu) recently.

So that's the other reason I haven't posted. 'Cause I like my MacBook Pro and dropping it in the toilet prolly wouldn't be good for it. Nope.

And in other news, I actually went out and saw some of the in-laws the other day.

That's not a reason I haven't posted, but it is news. Work with me, people!