Sometimes, work is just funny. Medicine takes a lot of training, but sometimes it's the simple stuff that patients really appreciate. Example:
Adolescent girl carried in by her parents after a fall. On exam, her right patella is waaaaaaaaaaaay out of place. If the proper place for a knee bone is earth, this sucker was having a picnic on Pluto. Luckily, reducing a dislocated patella is easy: put medial and upward pressure on the patella and then flex (bend) the knee. Pop! Right back to earth. So I reduced her dislocation, causing this child to scream, "Yeoow! (Pause) OH MY GOD, you're a GENIUS!" Needless to say, I was very gratified. Until the entire department started teasing me about my Einsteinian status. It doesn't help that I have a button on my badge that labels me "Jenius". Heh.
I love my job.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Two a day - kitchen style
I've come across a meme I can't resist. Without further ado - the kitchen meme!
In the kitchen with... doctawife
Variety is the spice of life.
In my cupboard, I have this many spices: Two drawers worth, plus the revolving spice rack on top, PLUS the four kinds of salt I have around: sea salt, kosher salt, regular table salt and pink salt I picked up in Napa Valley.
Rack or no rack? Both. We used to have two racks in the old apartment, but the new place is more of a drawer kinda joint, so we've retired them. Except for the revolving rack mentioned above.
Alphabetize? Um, no. The salt is kept next to the cooktop with the oils and tongs, the popular spices are in the top drawer, and the revolving rack holds some of the marginally useful stuff. Definitely no A-Z order.
Which spice do you use most often? Fleur de Sel. Or is that Sal? Anyway, it's fancy French sea salt. I love it.
Which recipe? Ooooh. I just made a fantastic dish inspired by the Indian subcontinent from one of the Food and Wine cookbooks. I love me the Food and Wine - so hard to go wrong.
It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Coffee or tea? Coffee
Do you make coffee at home? Yes. We have at least five different ways to make coffee around here: French press, drip machine, Bodum weird vacuum kettle, espresso machine, ebrit, and probably something I can't remember.
If you make tea, loose or in bags? Loose. But usually only when we want something decaf.
How many kinds of tea do you have? 2 or 3, mostly herbal.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I use my stovetop: I used to use my stovetop almost every day, but then I started working again. Since hubbie and I are both gaining weight, I (we) need to starting cooking for ourselves more. Even when using heavy cream, I think we do better calorie wise eating at home than when eating out. And I love my stovetop - five burners of joy...
I use my oven: Whenever I'm baking bread, a chicken or a pizza. Yummy stuff, but the darn thing definitely needs cleaning!
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Soy or cow? Organic Cow all the way! So yummy, and the expiration date is always light years farther away than the non organic stuff.
Skim or whole? 2%. I used to be a skim kinda gal, but I've come to love whole milk in my coffee. My compromise? 2%.
How many gallons a week? Less than a 1/2 gallon. Really, it's just around for coffee and the occasional sauce. No glasses of milk here... Well, unless peanut butter is involved. Then a glass of milk is a must.
Three items in my freezer (right now):
Three things in my fridge (right now):
Item I am most chagrined about: The lack of fresh produce. I want to cook more, damn it! But I can't if the fridge and pantry are bare. Grocery store, here I come!
Item I bet noone else has: A pressure cooker. And yes, I use that sucker all of the time. How do you think I got all that home made chicken stock when I work crazy doctor hours? I don't have time to wait around for stock to simmer! 30 minutes in a pressure cooker and I'm done, baby. One of the best inventions ever, I tell ya!
In the kitchen with... doctawife
Variety is the spice of life.
In my cupboard, I have this many spices: Two drawers worth, plus the revolving spice rack on top, PLUS the four kinds of salt I have around: sea salt, kosher salt, regular table salt and pink salt I picked up in Napa Valley.
Rack or no rack? Both. We used to have two racks in the old apartment, but the new place is more of a drawer kinda joint, so we've retired them. Except for the revolving rack mentioned above.
Alphabetize? Um, no. The salt is kept next to the cooktop with the oils and tongs, the popular spices are in the top drawer, and the revolving rack holds some of the marginally useful stuff. Definitely no A-Z order.
Which spice do you use most often? Fleur de Sel. Or is that Sal? Anyway, it's fancy French sea salt. I love it.
Which recipe? Ooooh. I just made a fantastic dish inspired by the Indian subcontinent from one of the Food and Wine cookbooks. I love me the Food and Wine - so hard to go wrong.
It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Coffee or tea? Coffee
Do you make coffee at home? Yes. We have at least five different ways to make coffee around here: French press, drip machine, Bodum weird vacuum kettle, espresso machine, ebrit, and probably something I can't remember.
If you make tea, loose or in bags? Loose. But usually only when we want something decaf.
How many kinds of tea do you have? 2 or 3, mostly herbal.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I use my stovetop: I used to use my stovetop almost every day, but then I started working again. Since hubbie and I are both gaining weight, I (we) need to starting cooking for ourselves more. Even when using heavy cream, I think we do better calorie wise eating at home than when eating out. And I love my stovetop - five burners of joy...
I use my oven: Whenever I'm baking bread, a chicken or a pizza. Yummy stuff, but the darn thing definitely needs cleaning!
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Soy or cow? Organic Cow all the way! So yummy, and the expiration date is always light years farther away than the non organic stuff.
Skim or whole? 2%. I used to be a skim kinda gal, but I've come to love whole milk in my coffee. My compromise? 2%.
How many gallons a week? Less than a 1/2 gallon. Really, it's just around for coffee and the occasional sauce. No glasses of milk here... Well, unless peanut butter is involved. Then a glass of milk is a must.
Three items in my freezer (right now):
- home made chicken stock
- pasta
- home made ground beef
Three things in my fridge (right now):
- St. Arnold's root beer
- St. Arnold's Lawnmower
- Yummy leftovers from that Indian inspired dish I mentioned earlier.
Item I am most chagrined about: The lack of fresh produce. I want to cook more, damn it! But I can't if the fridge and pantry are bare. Grocery store, here I come!
Item I bet noone else has: A pressure cooker. And yes, I use that sucker all of the time. How do you think I got all that home made chicken stock when I work crazy doctor hours? I don't have time to wait around for stock to simmer! 30 minutes in a pressure cooker and I'm done, baby. One of the best inventions ever, I tell ya!
Prostitutes
Now, I've never understood why the world's oldest profession is illegal. If I give it up for free, no problem. But if a guy or gal charges for it? Horrifying! Is sex for money really that bad? If regulated, wouldn't the government make money hand over fist? Wouldn't both the johns and the whores enjoy a safer environment? It's just sex. Not coke or heroin or pedophilia - just sex between consenting adults with a pre-existing cash contract. Sounds kinda like a premarital agreement if ya ask me. A very short term marital agreement, but hey, some folks just aren't that into commitment....
And if prostitution was legal, my biggest pet peeve about my 'hood would go away: the transvestite hookers. Why would they go away? These 'gals' would have some regulated indoor space in which to work... NOT the street in front of my townhouse! I have slowly started to hate these 'ladies'. They bring thoroughly unsavory johns into my area, decrease my property value and worst of all make me feel unsafe. I just got off of a 6p - 2a shift after driving our third car to work. Why does the fact that I drove the 'third' car matter? 'Cause it is the car we park on the street.
Dumb move.
I had two 'lovely ladies' try to proposition me as I parked my car. I was just PARKING not angling for a blow job. (Or whatever the female equivalent would be.) But nooooo, the 'ladies' had to saunter over and make me wanna crawl outta my skin. Luckily (?) they both got picked up before I was ready to get out of the car.
Yeah, I felt real safe. Then again, I'm the dumbass who drove the car that needed to be parked on the street at 2am.
Note to self: next time drive the car that gets parked in the gated garage. Duh!
And if prostitution was legal, my biggest pet peeve about my 'hood would go away: the transvestite hookers. Why would they go away? These 'gals' would have some regulated indoor space in which to work... NOT the street in front of my townhouse! I have slowly started to hate these 'ladies'. They bring thoroughly unsavory johns into my area, decrease my property value and worst of all make me feel unsafe. I just got off of a 6p - 2a shift after driving our third car to work. Why does the fact that I drove the 'third' car matter? 'Cause it is the car we park on the street.
Dumb move.
I had two 'lovely ladies' try to proposition me as I parked my car. I was just PARKING not angling for a blow job. (Or whatever the female equivalent would be.) But nooooo, the 'ladies' had to saunter over and make me wanna crawl outta my skin. Luckily (?) they both got picked up before I was ready to get out of the car.
Yeah, I felt real safe. Then again, I'm the dumbass who drove the car that needed to be parked on the street at 2am.
Note to self: next time drive the car that gets parked in the gated garage. Duh!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Baseball!
Provided that my brudder-in-law is home this weekend, hubbie and I will be seeing the Boston Red Sox at the Ballpark at Arlington. As a member of the Red Sox Nation, this is a huge deal. I've so missed my boyz! Manny, Ortiz, Wakefield, Varitek.. They all make my heart go pitter patter. The new guys, who are becoming my boyz as I watch more and more baseball on my nifty cable package, (more on that later) aren't shabby either. Even if one of them is named after a breakfast cereal.
It's gonna be a good year for baseball. Check this out:
It's gonna be a good year for baseball. Check this out:
- We've been to at least six, maybe more, Astros games so far this year. There have only been 23 home games. That's better than 1/4 of the games! If you knew how crazy my schedule was, you'd know how remarkable that is.
- We're doing an east coast baseball vacation! Baltimore Orioles x 2, New York Yankees x1 (It's just for the stadium, people! Calm down already...) and Boston Red Sox at Fenway x 1.
- We bought MLB Season ticket on cable, so we're watching insane amounts of 'ball on the boob tube. With this nifty package, we can watch every game being shown on a given night. (Unless the evil TV gods have decreed that There Shall be a Blackout. Stoopid MLB and TV execs. I hate them.) Every night at 6pm, when I'm home, I go trolling for Red Sox games. If the Sox aren't on, I'll wait a hour and then go looking for 'Stros games. If neither team is on, I go looking for CSI. (Mmmm... Grissom.) I mean, really, who wants to watch the Rockies when I could be looking at hot Las Vegas Action? Who?!?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Local food
I've been tagged by Karla over in Norway. This is a good thing, since I've been neglecting this blog o' mine. Bad doctawife, bad! (Side note: I found out last night that when hubbie refers to me at work, he almost alway says Dr. Wife. Not my name, or my other name (yeah, yeah I have to different given names, and only one of them is on my birth certificate, what's it to ya?) or even doctawife, but Dr. Wife. How weird/cool is that?)
So I'm supposed to list everyone whose done the meme, and then tag five people. Here's the problem, folks - I don't know five other bloggers. At least not five other bloggers who read my site. I think I top out at three. And two of those three have already done the meme. So I guess I'll just consider myself a dead end and hope the Gods of the Intarweb don't get me. But here are the previous posters:
With no further ado - My Favorite Five Local Eats!
1) The Roving Mexican. These noble souls are men and women who walk, bike and drive around to various Houston bars and sell drunk idiots like me tamales. For six US dollars, I can buy one dozen delicious, hot, fragrant meat tamales. That's enough to feed the table! And, usually, the Roving Mexican also throws in a little tub of spicy green sauce. Good eats, people, even when you're the designated driver and are therefore sober. (My apologies to any tamale people who aren't Mexican but are instead Guatemalan or Nicaraguan or Houstonian. The Roving Person-of-Hispanic-Descent-or-Just-Someone-Who-Makes-Really-Good-Tamales just doesn't sound as good.)
2) Benjy's. Good chi-chi nouvelle cuisine. Unfortunately, I haven't been there in many moons. I talked to someone who ate there last week and she said that the service wasn't very good and the food has slipped. I REALLY hope that's not the case, 'cause Benjy's has been my only source of reliable fancy goodness. There are other fancy restaurants in town, but they either cost a LOT more or the food isn't good enough to justify the price. (Which, by the way, is something I hate. If I'm paying $20 a plate, I want the food to be better than what I can make at home. This is a constantly moving target, since my cooking continues to improve, but we always knew I was a demanding bitch.)
3) Dolce Vita. The best damn pizza in Texas. Yeah, it's fancy-pants pizza, but it is darn good. The wine list doesn't suck either - a nice spread of prices and everything on the list is solid. Sure, the $30 bottle won't necessarily knock you speechless, but you won't feel gypped either. (Man, 'gypped' sure is a racial slur, ain't it? I hadn't really put that together until I just spelled it out. I guess that's the last time you'll see me type that word...)
4) Any Vietnamese restaurant near Milam between Francis and McGowen. Can we say pho? I sure can. This entry actually accounts for three restaurants. One is great at beef pho with egg noddles, one is great for bo luc lac (garlic beef sauted in butter - LOTS of butter) and one has awesome seafood egg noodle pho. Ya can't go wrong in this area... as long as it's Asian food yer wantin'. What can I tell ya - even the signs are in Vietnamese!
5) London Sizzler. This is NOT the place to go for great service or fast eats. The kitchen is sssllloooooowwwwww. Think slug. Or better yet, think glacial. Hubbie and I have joked that we wish we could call ahead with our order. That way our food might be ready twenty minutes after we arrived. But for good Indian food, the place can't be beat. The biryani is awesome, so is the butter chicken and the paneer. Hot yummy naan. Drool. But trust me folks, get an appetizer. Otherwise you'll go a little crazy while waiting. Trust me, it's happened. And it wasn't pretty.
So I'm supposed to list everyone whose done the meme, and then tag five people. Here's the problem, folks - I don't know five other bloggers. At least not five other bloggers who read my site. I think I top out at three. And two of those three have already done the meme. So I guess I'll just consider myself a dead end and hope the Gods of the Intarweb don't get me. But here are the previous posters:
- Velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
- LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
- Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
- Olivia (London, England)
- ML (Utah, USA)
- J (California, USA)
- CuriosityKiller (Hong Kong, SAR)
- Shelli (Minnesota, USA)
- Bluepaintred (Saskatchewan, Canada)
- Avitable (Florida, USA)
- Diana (Singapore, Singapore)
- Karla the Texpatriate(Oslo, Norway)
With no further ado - My Favorite Five Local Eats!
1) The Roving Mexican. These noble souls are men and women who walk, bike and drive around to various Houston bars and sell drunk idiots like me tamales. For six US dollars, I can buy one dozen delicious, hot, fragrant meat tamales. That's enough to feed the table! And, usually, the Roving Mexican also throws in a little tub of spicy green sauce. Good eats, people, even when you're the designated driver and are therefore sober. (My apologies to any tamale people who aren't Mexican but are instead Guatemalan or Nicaraguan or Houstonian. The Roving Person-of-Hispanic-Descent-or-Just-Someone-Who-Makes-Really-Good-Tamales just doesn't sound as good.)
2) Benjy's. Good chi-chi nouvelle cuisine. Unfortunately, I haven't been there in many moons. I talked to someone who ate there last week and she said that the service wasn't very good and the food has slipped. I REALLY hope that's not the case, 'cause Benjy's has been my only source of reliable fancy goodness. There are other fancy restaurants in town, but they either cost a LOT more or the food isn't good enough to justify the price. (Which, by the way, is something I hate. If I'm paying $20 a plate, I want the food to be better than what I can make at home. This is a constantly moving target, since my cooking continues to improve, but we always knew I was a demanding bitch.)
3) Dolce Vita. The best damn pizza in Texas. Yeah, it's fancy-pants pizza, but it is darn good. The wine list doesn't suck either - a nice spread of prices and everything on the list is solid. Sure, the $30 bottle won't necessarily knock you speechless, but you won't feel gypped either. (Man, 'gypped' sure is a racial slur, ain't it? I hadn't really put that together until I just spelled it out. I guess that's the last time you'll see me type that word...)
4) Any Vietnamese restaurant near Milam between Francis and McGowen. Can we say pho? I sure can. This entry actually accounts for three restaurants. One is great at beef pho with egg noddles, one is great for bo luc lac (garlic beef sauted in butter - LOTS of butter) and one has awesome seafood egg noodle pho. Ya can't go wrong in this area... as long as it's Asian food yer wantin'. What can I tell ya - even the signs are in Vietnamese!
5) London Sizzler. This is NOT the place to go for great service or fast eats. The kitchen is sssllloooooowwwwww. Think slug. Or better yet, think glacial. Hubbie and I have joked that we wish we could call ahead with our order. That way our food might be ready twenty minutes after we arrived. But for good Indian food, the place can't be beat. The biryani is awesome, so is the butter chicken and the paneer. Hot yummy naan. Drool. But trust me folks, get an appetizer. Otherwise you'll go a little crazy while waiting. Trust me, it's happened. And it wasn't pretty.
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