Back, to fall
Oct. 8th, 2012 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironic1. Hey, thanks to those of you who stopped in to offer your own strategies on Festivids signups. They were helpful, and I've settled on my choices, hurrah.
2. Jotted down to Florida this weekend to visit my grandparents. My dad and my sister also flew down. We tried to coordinate flights because we shared a rental car, but between holiday delays and my sister attempting to fly standby both days, we got scattered. Other than that, it went pretty well. Rained most of the time, and my slowly fading, wheelchair-bound grandmother remains reluctant to go anywhere, but we still made it to a drive-through safari thing—rhinoceroses are huge, and we saw a herd of something-or-other-ungulates startle and scatter when lightning struck a copse behind them—and talked a lot.
Also had a dream about House and Wilson that has sadly been fading—something about Wilson seeing a deceased patient, which triggered a vision/understanding that he would be next, and then House was distraught.
3. Returned to find that, as the weather forecast had promised, the temperature here finally dropped from 80ish to 60ish. Fall, at last! Sweaters and coats and pumpkins and roasting! Halloween and Thanksgiving! Fall is my favorite. I've been itching for it but it's been too warm to relish the season.
4. Speaking of squash, made this roasted butternut squash and shallot soup recipe for the first time tonight, subbing vegetable broth for chicken and powdered ginger for fresh. Oh, my goodness, yum.
5. Read a good book on the flights: Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross. I'd picked it up last summer when Borders was going out of business :( and finally got around to reading it. I always enjoy medical writing from a humanities perspective—Montross was an English major/teacher before going to med school at age 28—and I haven't yet exhausted the collection of books, essays and poems about the intense, complex experience of going through anatomy lab; this was an excellent read. Didn't much repeat the history of dissection and body-snatching that others have covered, but touched on stories here and there and jumped forward to other relevant moments in her own medical training. Poetic at times. Unexpected passages move you to tears. Just, full of fascinating detail about what it was like for her to go through this emotionally and intellectually difficult course with vivid descriptions of the procedures themselves and the repercussions they have on the people performing them.
6. Good to be back, anyway. Back at home, back to myself. Went through a case of the blahs for several weeks, hence the complete lack of posts in September. Work, unusually, has been stressful and unmotivating and promises to continue as such for a few more months. At least there are friends, Festivids and a freelance job. And a performance of Dracula the ballet next month! Dracula and ballet together! Worthy of exclamation marks.
2. Jotted down to Florida this weekend to visit my grandparents. My dad and my sister also flew down. We tried to coordinate flights because we shared a rental car, but between holiday delays and my sister attempting to fly standby both days, we got scattered. Other than that, it went pretty well. Rained most of the time, and my slowly fading, wheelchair-bound grandmother remains reluctant to go anywhere, but we still made it to a drive-through safari thing—rhinoceroses are huge, and we saw a herd of something-or-other-ungulates startle and scatter when lightning struck a copse behind them—and talked a lot.
Also had a dream about House and Wilson that has sadly been fading—something about Wilson seeing a deceased patient, which triggered a vision/understanding that he would be next, and then House was distraught.
3. Returned to find that, as the weather forecast had promised, the temperature here finally dropped from 80ish to 60ish. Fall, at last! Sweaters and coats and pumpkins and roasting! Halloween and Thanksgiving! Fall is my favorite. I've been itching for it but it's been too warm to relish the season.
4. Speaking of squash, made this roasted butternut squash and shallot soup recipe for the first time tonight, subbing vegetable broth for chicken and powdered ginger for fresh. Oh, my goodness, yum.
5. Read a good book on the flights: Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab by Christine Montross. I'd picked it up last summer when Borders was going out of business :( and finally got around to reading it. I always enjoy medical writing from a humanities perspective—Montross was an English major/teacher before going to med school at age 28—and I haven't yet exhausted the collection of books, essays and poems about the intense, complex experience of going through anatomy lab; this was an excellent read. Didn't much repeat the history of dissection and body-snatching that others have covered, but touched on stories here and there and jumped forward to other relevant moments in her own medical training. Poetic at times. Unexpected passages move you to tears. Just, full of fascinating detail about what it was like for her to go through this emotionally and intellectually difficult course with vivid descriptions of the procedures themselves and the repercussions they have on the people performing them.
6. Good to be back, anyway. Back at home, back to myself. Went through a case of the blahs for several weeks, hence the complete lack of posts in September. Work, unusually, has been stressful and unmotivating and promises to continue as such for a few more months. At least there are friends, Festivids and a freelance job. And a performance of Dracula the ballet next month! Dracula and ballet together! Worthy of exclamation marks.
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Date: Oct. 12th, 2012 05:11 pm (UTC)