I watch the History Channel

2003-05-01 - 10:33 a.m.

Yesterday I didn't go to work. Why? Because I am a lazy bum and didn't feel like it. Ok, I had a bit of an excuse, but that's the main reason. I'm actually starting Wednesday as my clinic days because Slick stole my Fridays and Fluffy is out at county so he has Mondays. I swear, I go on vacation for one week... But anyway, Wednesdays are diabetes education days. Which is actually cool. Or could be cool. Doing diabetes education out at county was really nifty. Why? Because the pharmacists were given a modicum of autonomy, that's why! Here the doctors think we're second class practitioners who should only speak when spoken to and who should never actually talk to patients about anything that isn't directly related to drug therapy. Fucking doctors. The pharmacy department would like to change the doctors' opinion on that matter, but they know it's not going to happen over night. So who do they send out to test the waters and be the target of anti-pharmacy wrath? The residents, of course. And I, for one, am not into getting my head bitten off and being treated like an imbecile, so yes, I avoided going out there. I know, I'm a wimp. But remember there was that little excuse that I had. I had a fractured tooth and I had a dentist appointment to get it filled in the afternoon so I would've had to miss the afternoon anyway. So I called into work and told them I broke my tooth but the dentist would be able to get me in to fix it that afternoon, but in the meantime, I was going to take a sick day. Hey, it was true. I just didn't mention that I broke the tooth months ago. Besides, I have sick days to burn and it's use 'em or lose 'em, right? I only have eight weeks to go until I'm outta here anyway.

So while I was home I watched the part of "You've Got Mail" that took place in Cafe Lalo. It was so cool to see them in a place where I was. I then resisted the urge to watch the rest of the movie and instead balanced my checkbook and went to the bank to deposit my tax refunds and the money the county payed me for jury duty, $22. My ex-roommate from my third year in pharmacy school also finally sent me a check paying me the money she owed me for rent and phone bills and such. I was just writing that money off, I never expected to see it. I was just happy to be rid of her, psycho girl. Then I posted all 500+ pictures I took on my trip online. While looking through Roadiepig's pictures I discovered a new site that will let me post an unlimited amount of pictures. I don't know if I can reorganize them or not, but when I posted them, the computer somehow managed to put them up in semi-random order. Plus I haven't labeled them or anything. But anyway, if anyone wants to take a gander at them, just give me a holler and I'll let you know where they are. I told the girls that I would burn them all a CD of the pictures I took on the trip. But in total the pictures come to about 70mb. So I searched through all my old CDs, floppies, and zip disks and came up with an additional 110mb of pictures of the five of us. But CDs have 650 to 700mb on them, and that just seems like such a waste to leave that much blank. I could fill it up with mp3s, but my friends don't listen to the same kind of music I do (sad but true). I'm thinking I could put the soundtrack to "Rent" on there because that goes with the trip, but I don't know what else. Do any of you have any cool ideas for things I could put on the CD? Anyway, putzing around with my computer kept me occupied until it was time to go to the dentist. I was very good and didn't cry. And in all honesty, it didn't hurt either. Not much anyway. The worst part was when they were squirting cold air and water around in my mouth and getting it on my other un-numb teeth which are sensitive to cold. But going to the dentist always puts me in a grouchy, sleepy mood. I went home and putzed on the computer more until the numbness finally wore off and then went out to dinner with my parents. Then I had a volleyball game last night, too. I sucked, but we won. One of the women on my team is a realtor. She was telling me how her cell phone died and since she uses it for her job she was having fits without it. "You know," she added, "kinda of like you without your drugs." But later she was teasing me about how young I am. She was talking about a singer, the name of whom I've forgotten because I hadn't heard of her, and she said to me, "You probably haven't heard of her, you're too young." I figure if people are teasing me about how young I am, then it becomes perfectly acceptable for me to tease them about how old they are. So I said with mock indignanty, "Of course I've heard of her. I watch the history channel!" Later she asked me if I want to play on a four-person women's team with her Thursday nights. I told her I'd love to. And then as I was driving away afterwards I realized I'm an idiot (well, no, this is not a new realization), I can't commit to play on a team with her. I will be gone all July and I have no idea where I'll be after that.

At the beginning of last month I signed up to be a member of DearX. They are pretty picky there. They won't let you retropost and you must submit an entry every month. You can only sign up to join during the first fifteen days of the month you are not to e-mail them bugging them about whether or not you have been accepted as a member, they will e-mail you. Well, anyway, as you are probably aware, April has come and gone. I didn't submit a DearX entry because I hadn't gotten an e-mail saying that I was accepted as a member. Today, while checking through my stats, I discovered that someone got to me through DearX. I went and looked, and sure enough, I'm listed as a member. I still haven't gotten an e-mail. I find this extraordinarily annoying and I think if they are going to be so strict about the rules then they should be just as strict about following the rules themselves. And if they are upset about me not submitting an April entry...

You know what? I came here today to write about the rest of my trip. I've been writing for half an hour and managed to ramble on quite a bit and I still haven't gotten to the trip. Oh and by the way, regarding the picture I posted of myself a few entries ago, yes, those are motion marks around my ears.

Ok, back to Wednesday, April 23. We had pretty well packed all of our stuff the night before, so it didn't take us long to get ready to go in the morning. We walked from Flik's school down to Nussbaum & Wu's for breakfast, the Babe and I pulling our luggage and carrying our sleeping bags. The Bagel Guy was there again so I got to see his sweet little smile one last time. After breakfast, Flik walked the Babe and I down to the subway station. We hugged goodbye through the turnstyle and then the Babe and I were off. Like experts, we transferred from the regular subway train to the express and then made our way through Penn Station to the Amtrak station without any problems. Onboard the train it was much more crowded than it had been coming the other direction. The trip went pretty quickly, and somehow I failed to notice when we stopped at the stop that was just before ours so I was caught rather by surprise when we came to our stop. Those trains don't wait long for people to get on and off and the Babe wasn't tall enough or strong enough to get her own luggage down from the overhead compartment so I had to get them both down and rush out the doors and we made it just in the nick of time. Tigger, however, had taken a wrong turn somewhere and gotten lost on her way to pick us up. So we sat outside the train station for a while waiting for her. In the car on the way to her house we planned what we would do for the next three days. We went to some sort of noodle place for lunch where I got something way too spicy for me but ate it anyway and then we went to the University of Maryland campus so Tigger could go to orchestra rehearsal. The Babe and I went to the library where I checked my e-mail and wrote this entry and then ended up playing a rousing game of Yahoo! Graffiti with the Babe. After orchestra rehearsal we drove out to Rockville where we had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. That is one of Tigger's all time favorite restaurants and we ate way too much. Then we ordered dessert. Afterwards we went back to campus and played around in one of the music classrooms where they had a piano. Tigger played for us and we all sang. She is really awesome at playing by ear. You can say, "Hey Tigger, play [insert song here]!" and if she has heard of it, she will play it better than I could play it if I practiced for a hundred years. On the piano. This is the girl who is finishing up a masters degree in violin performance. I'm telling you, she totally rocks. So we played there until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore and then went back to her place.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast at IHOP. Then we caught the Metro over to Washington DC. Our original plan was to take some sort of sightseeing tour bus thing because Tigger had read that it cost $5 to take it all day. We started out at the Ronald Reagan building where we stopped in at the visitor center to get maps. Then we walked over to the White House where we discovered that the tour bus thing actually cost $20 and we decided to just do a walking tour instead. So we continued walking down the street past the Red Cross building and the old and new executive office buildings and then we stopped in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It was mostly modern art stuff and it also had a special display about Frank Lloyd Wright. Then we continued walking up 17th street until we got to Farragut Square where we ate lunch at a cafeteria style restaurant. Then we hopped the Metro over to the Arlington National Cemetery. We ended up spending a lot more time there than I expected we would. I thought we'd look in and then go. But there was so much to see. We saw JFK's memorial (not too impressive) and then we walked up to the Arlington House where Robert E. Lee lived. Then we walked over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which is really what we wanted to see. We watched the changing of the guard. It's a really elaborate process, but I was more impressed with the guard himself. I'm not sure what the significance of the number 21 is, other than the fact that the tomb was built in 1921, but the guard must walk 21 steps from one side of the tomb to the other, face front, pause for 21 seconds, face towards the middle, pause for 21 seconds, and then walk the 21 steps to the other side where he starts again. The guard couldn't ever just let his mind wander or something because he'd always have to be counting to 21 in his head. Tigger and the Babe were tired so they sat there and watched the guy walk back and forth for a while while I went and looked at the Challenger Memorial and the U.S.S. Maine Memorial. Then I came and picked them up and we started walking back towards Washington. We took the Arlington Memorial Bridge across the Potomac to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we went to the Vietnam Memorial and took a breather on the edge of the Reflecting Pool. Then we walked by the Washington Memorial over to the Tidal Basin where we looked across at the Jefferson Memorial because we were too tired to actually walk over to it. We walked all the way around the Washington Memorial up to The Ellipse where we bought souvenirs and then walked back past the EPA and the Treasury Department to the Ronald Reagan building where we caught the Metro back to Maryland. We got in the car and drove to Chevy's for dinner and then back to campus for another evening of playing with the piano.

The next morning we slept in a bit. We ate left overs for breakfast (I ate leftover way too hot for me noodles), and then drove out to Great Falls National Park, which is along the Potomac River. We stayed on the Maryland side. We hiked out and saw the falls, which in my opinion were actually just really hefty rapids, but they were definitely pretty. They also had a system of canals and locks set up which they used to use in the old days for getting ships through the falls. That was pretty neat and there were lots of animals and flowers to see too. We stayed out there most of the morning then back to Tigger's town to Chipotle for lunch. Then Tigger had orchestra rehearsal again so the Babe and I took her car and drove around. Mostly we just drove around campus, but the campus is huge. I still think we didn't see everything. The Babe had my camera and she was snapping pictures left and right while I drove. Then we went back to the library and played more Yahoo! Graffiti until Tigger was done with rehearsal. For dinner we went to a Chinese vegetarian restaurant. I don't remember the name of it, though, it was several words long and in Chinese. Everything there was either veggie only or had that fake soy meat stuff in it. It was actually very good, but hoo boy were we gassy that night! After dinner we did a little shopping and then went back to Tigger's place where we played, believe it or not, dress up. Our rules to the game were that the model has absolutely no say in what they have to wear and the object is to see how completely ridiculous we can make the model look. Immature or not, it was certainly good for a hearty laugh.

Ok, last day. We got up relatively early just because we were all sad to be leaving. We got dressed and packed and then drove out to a bagel place for breakfast. Then we went to a mall called Arundel Mills and shopped for a while. We had lunch at the food court and then drove out to the airport. The Babe and I checked in and then the three of us sat there and talked until I decided it was time to go. My flight was the earliest. We hugged goodbye and I started my way through the security checks. They decided they needed to search my backpack. While they were doing that I suddenly heard several loud bangs, a crash, and lots of yelling at one of the security stations behind me. A deep voice yelled, "Everybody down!" at which point everyone who didn't immediately hit the deck got tackled by one of many burly Maryland police officers. So of course they had to close down the whole security station and we all had to sit there while they sorted out what was going on. It turned out, I think, that one of the guys running the X-ray machine got in an argument with someone going through. Nobody had any weapons or anything, but one guy shoved the other guy's head through the glass partition between security lanes and that was that. They finally decided it was safe for us to get up off the ground and the dude continued checking my backpack until he was sure I was not carrying a bomb after all and then they let me through into the terminal. When I got to my gate the plane was already boarding so I walked right on. I had a layover in Minneapolis again but otherwise no more events until I made it home. My dad was supposed to pick me up but forgot which terminal I was coming into, so spent a long time waiting for me at the other one before finding me. Then we went out to dinner on the way home and my vacation was over.