Please pass the sunscreen

2003-06-10 - 4:46 p.m.

You won't believe this. I think I'm going to Japan. Azuma, one of my friends from high school, majored in Japanese at Berkeley and is now living in Japan teaching English. He's been there for nearly a year now. Yesterday he asked me to go visit him. I laughed. Me? Go to Japan? Yeah, right, funny. But he insisted that it was a good idea and so I decided to give it some thought. And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. How often does someone in Japan invite me to go visit them? When's the next opportunity I will have to go to Japan with someone who speaks the language and knows their way around and can provide me with a place to stay? When's the next time I'm going to not have to take time off of work to go on a vacation? I've never been outside of North America. This could be so cool. Japan. Everyone I've talked to has told me it is a wonderful opportunity. Everyone, that is, except my dad. My dad thinks I shouldn't be travelling with this whole SARS thing going on. I told him they don't have SARS in Japan and he said, what about the other people on the plane? Who's to say they don't have it? I don't know, who's to say the next person who walks into my hospital won't have SARS? I can't live my life that way. But anyway, I don't even have a passport. Today I went down to the post office and applied for one. I should get it within six weeks. How long is a good length of time to stay in Japan? This is so exciting!

But on to more mundane things. First thing this morning my mom and I dropped off my parents' car at the window tinting place. Their car came with tinted windows, but the tint is starting to pucker and bubble so that its getting very difficult to see through, so they're having it redone. Apparently this is an all day affair because they're still not done and it's a little after five. When we got home my mom and I took the first step towards getting our swimming pool ready to use for the summer. Before we can uncover the pool we have to take care of the deck. It has to be cleaned and waterproofed. So today we scrubbed. Yuck. Tomorrow we will paint on the waterproofing. Also yuck. We went out to lunch at a Mexican joint called Adelberto's. We went there once about ten years ago and for some reason we didn't like it and had never been back. We couldn't remember why we didn't like it, though, and today we decided to give it another go. I think today's lunch was enough to last us another ten years. Ew. After lunch I dolled myself up a bit and went to the post office in Folsom to apply for my passport. Then I took my car down to the Oilstop to have its oil changed. I got this coupon in the mail that said I could get my oil changed for something like $23. While I was there they told me I needed everything else under the sun changed too and I ended up spending over $150.

The last thing I did today was reserve a couple of campsites for us to go camping in July. I talked to Tigger and the Babe yesterday and they both said they would be able to come. Yippee! Doodle told me that she will definitely not be able to come. Oh well, I guess I'll take what I can get. Yesterday I also talked to Feathers, one of my ex-roommates. She lives down in San Diego and recently quit her job. Her last day is this Friday. Being a pharmacist, though, she was quickly snapped up by another hospital. She's taking one week off between jobs and during that time she's coming up north to visit some old friends. So next week I'll be driving down to Stockton to meet her and Deenpo for dinner one evening.

This is so cool. I could live my life like this forever, just going out with old friends. Too bad there's that whole money issue. Gotta work. Still don't know where I'm going to work. I need to update my CV and start spreading it around. My preceptor in CCU has a friend who works at the University of Washington's hospital. He said he sent her an e-mail recommending me. He says he thinks they have an opening up there in their CCU. When he first told me, I was scared. I'm way too stupid to actually work in a CCU! But then I thought about it some more and decided that if I had the opportunity to do a job like that, I should definitely try it. Nothing says I have to stay there forever. All through school I always said my dream job would be working as a clinical pharmacist in a CCU. It wasn't until I started my residency that I decided I was too dumb to actually do it. The whole point of doing a residency was to build up my confidence, not to tear it down, I don't know what happenned. But if my preceptor thinks I'm good enough to work at U Dub, I must have some potential, right? Right. If a job like that comes along, I will jump at it. Yes I will.

Today, after scrubbing the deck, I wandered around my backyard and took pictures. I actually came up with quite a few good ones. I just thought I'd share a few with you here. Sorry if this takes too long for you to load.

This is a picture of an oak tree I planted in my backyard. It was originally a volunteer in a place in the yard where it was unwanted, so I transplanted it here. Now, I'm not known in my family for having a green thumb. In fact, generally, the less I try to help a plant, the healthier it is. So here's my oak tree. When I planted it I imagined it growing into a huge tree like the one in "Gone with the Wind" and I could sit around and tell my grandchildren how I planted it during the summer of my 18th year. Because of that I know that I planted this tree six years ago. Yes, that tree is six years old. This year is the first year it has been taller than the flowers around it. We have a long way to go to be "Gone with the Wind."

This year we decided not to plant a garden because we will be gone during the month of July. This shot is looking through the volunteers in the fallow garden out towards my backyard.

Volunteer sage in the garden.

And finally a shot looking up through the oleanders.