If you lose your pluck

2005-06-23 - 6:27 p.m.

Flik and I talked quite a bit this week about men. No one in particular, mostly just generalities. But I was thinking, there must be guys out there who don't like to drink or go dancing, right? Where do these guys hang out? I'd really like to know, because apparently I've been looking in the wrong places.

Last weekend I went to Moran State Park up on Orcas Island to go camping. I went with Duke and his friend and his friend's wife. They went out Friday afternoon but I had to work until late that night so I joined them early Saturday morning and we camped until Sunday. It was definitely fun, although I can't see myself hanging out with either of those other people without Duke around. However, I think I may have taken another large step towards nerd-dom. They taught me how to play Magic. And I liked it. Not only that, but I seemed to be good at it. I regularly beat the other people who claimed to be pretty good at it (Duke just learned this weekend, too).

I decided that I want to buy my own Magic cards. Yup, see? I'm such a nerd! Oh well, I guess actually I'm not because I was unsuccessful in my attempts. I've stopped by four separate stores (that the Wizards of the Coast website listed as carrying Magic cards) and none of them had any in stock (so I consoled myself by going to Half Price Books and spending $20). Well, two of them had a couple of theme packs, but I didn't really want those. So I guess I'll have to buy them online. But the ninth edition base set is coming out at the end of July so I'm thinking I'm going to hold off buying any until then (because after all, who am I going to play with, anyway?) and if I still want them then I will buy them.

Flik came on Monday while I took a few vacation days. I showed her all around the Seattle area. The first day she was here we had beautiful weather. She arrived around 1:30 and I took her to Kerry Park and the locks before we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Machiavelli's that was pretty good. Then we walked down and saw Batman Begins.

The next day they were cleaning my building's parking garage so I had to have my car out of it from 8am to 4pm so I took her out for a drive to see more distant stuff. We went out to Snoqualmie Falls and then up 90 and across to Leavenworth. Leavenworth was once a small mining town, but then the mines closed and the town was floundering economically so they decided to turn the whole town into a Bavarian village and make money off tourism. The whole town looks like it belongs in Disneyland. It's obnoxious, but cute. We had lunch there at a restaurant called Gustav's, which was really good, and then we walked around the little shops. This weekend they're having an accordion celebration--should I go back? Then we drove back to Seattle, stopping at the Deception Falls along the way and getting stuck in rush hour traffic in the city, which sucked.

When we got back to my building, we saw that someone had put a couch out by the dumpster. As we walked inside Flik said, "That's a nice looking couch." We went inside my apartment and put our stuff away and went to the bathroom and whatnot and then I said, "I'm going to go out and take another look at that couch." We went out there--the couch had no holes or stains and it didn't smell. So we took it! Flik, as you might've guessed by the fact that she's named after an ant, is not a large person. Moving that couch was quite an effort and we laughed so incredibly hard at ourselves as we did it, but now I have a couch. When I first moved here I swore I wasn't going to have anything but new furniture, but I guess my priorities have changed a bit since then. Somehow it seems more important to have money for a down payment on a house than to have matching furniture. Anyway, just for the heck of it I threw all the covers to all the padding from the couch in the washer and I haven't gotten around to putting it all back together yet, but maybe someday I'll show you a picture.

Yesterday I took Flik down to Pike Place Market for breakfast. We got coffee at the original Starbucks and piroshkies from a shop a few doors down. I've never had a piroshky before, but it was so yummy! From now on that's going to be the breakfast spot for people who come to visit me! Then we walked down to the waterfront and up to Pioneer Square where we went on the Underground Tour. It was my second time taking the tour, but I still enjoyed it. Then we walked back and had lunch at Westlake Center and then hung out at my place until it was time to take Flik back to the airport. It was a lot of fun having her here.

Today I had to go back to work. I'm working clinical shifts today and tomorrow. I was stressed out and bleeding before eight o'clock this morning! Of course I was feeling a whole lot better than the poor lady who's code was the source of both the stress and my cut finger, so I can't really complain. And then I wasn't very prepared for rounds and the only patient I really had something important to say anything about turned out to not be a patient of the hospitalist I was rounding with. And then Aunt Flo came to visit. And then I volunteered to cover triage for an hour for Blinky while she went to a meeting. And then I did a warfarin teach through a Vietnamese interpreter, which ended up not being too bad because the patient was really attentive and asked good questions and the interpreter seemed very good, too. Then ten minutes for lunch and two more hours of work and I was home!