That familiar sunrise

2005-04-20 - 5:36 p.m.

I talked to my scheduler yesterday and she promised me that I would indeed have 6 days off in a row after I finish working my 7 days of graveyard shifts in May. I'm already all booked up for those 6 days. Hopefully I won't be too tired to enjoy it! For starters, after I get off of work at 8am that last day, I'm heading straight to the airport and flying to New York to visit Flik. I'm spending three nights there. One of those evenings, though, she's going to be busy. I'm going to have dinner with Zed that night. I've known Zed for at least 4 years, possibly more, but I've never met him. So that'll be interesting--I hope! Then I'm flying back to Seattle where Somnambulist will be waiting for me. We'll hang out and go to a Red Sox vs. Mariners baseball game that weekend and then I'll go back to work and he'll fly home. Jam packed!

This week I've been training on tele. Monday and Tuesday Minnie was training me. It's interesting how I'm so used to being the student/intern/resident that I just fall so easily back into that role. Sometimes I have to work hard to remember to act like the full-fledged, totally responsible pharmacist I am. Minnie actually let me do very little by myself. She watched over me in everything I did. Today, though, Deep was training me. She basically let me go off and do my own thing. Her version of training was to pick up the workload that I'm not quick enough to handle in one shift yet and to be available to answer my questions. For the most part I think I can handle working tele. I really need to work on my knowledge base, but I think that will come. Especially if I work at it, which I intend to do. Working tele, though, is a whole bunch more stressful than working triage. Maybe it's just because I'm new at it, but when I come home at the end of the day, I feel like I've really had my butt kicked. I just want to collapse.

On Monday, after work, I went out for a run around Green Lake. I just went once, but I pushed myself really hard the whole way. I ended up beating my personal best on that route by two minutes. I was impressed with myself. I ran an 8:30 pace for a little over 3 miles. Yesterday I went out and ran the same distance but I was totally dead. And today I didn't run at all. I have an excuse, though, albeit not a very good one--I'm going out to CE dinner tonight.

On Monday also, on my way out to my car to go to the lake, I ran into a girl who lives in my building who I met once before. I met her at another CE dinner back in December or so. She's a pharmacist at a different hospital and we were surprised to discover that we live in the same building. But I didn't see her again until Monday. We happened to be going opposite directions through a doorway at the same time. We looked at each other for a moment and then she said, "You don't remember me, do you?" I'm glad she said something because I wouldn't have. I said, "Yes, I do. You're [insert her name here]." "Wow, I'm impressed you remember my name!" So we chatted a bit and then she invited me to go out to coffee with a group of her friends on Tuesday evening. I accepted. And I went too. There were six or seven people there besides she and I and everyone was really nice. Apparently it's a regular Tuesday night event, but I don't know if I'll go again. I sort of feel like I have to, though, just so it won't look like I hated going.

The singer is gone now. In a way I'm glad. It was a bit stressful having him around. There was way too much of the whole trying-to-figure-out-what-I'm-feeling thing going on. And that was based way too much on the trying-to-figure-out-what-he's-feeling thing. I kinda put my life on hold for him while he was here just so I'd be available whenever he was. It's nice to get things going again. But on the other hand, it was really nice having him here. Really, really nice. I think if I had it to do over again, I would do some things differently, but for the most part, I'd leave the important bits the same. I still don't know how he feels. Even when he tells me, I'm not sure I believe him.