Rounds and a Rounds we go

So I made it through the weekend. I needed not to be cooped up next to the computer, so I took a cheap trip to Glastonbury for the weekend.

I'm finding more and more, the people I know that comment LESS on Facebook, or the people that don't even HAVE accounts are the ones that have more solid relationships with others and with God! Nothing's misconstrued if it's a face to face conversation... just like the old days!! Grr...

So ANYWAY, the cheap trip to Glastonbury! I heard it was absolutely beautiful and was a great place if you just wanna get away from it all... and WOW it was so true! A town of spiritual awakening, inner peace, and of course, hippies!

Saturday morning I got out there, passed by Stonehenge, and found my way to this little bed and breakfast cottage, owned by a Canadian lady called Wendy and her daughter.

I sat down in the main room and showered up for the hike to the "Tor", a tower that one could view from almost anywhere in the city.

Over and over in the back of my mind, I found myself thanking God for what a beautiful place he has created!

That trek up to the Tor was LONG though! At least 4 miles each way, and uphill to get to the top! Glad I've been working out!

My roomies were in Southampton for the day, getting some shopping done,

Obviously I can't just dart away every weekend to something this spectacular, but with my first big week behind me, I think I deserved a breath of fresh air and a BIG reset.

Of course, a little taunting of the cows a little HAD to be done during the hike.

But I made it to the Tor though! After catching my breath, I looked around. There was such a BEAUTIFUL 360 degree panorama, and everyone was sitting silently on the west end of the hill, waiting for sunset. Couples, arm in arm, with their plastic glasses of red wine and little plates of cheese... hippie types, meditating about who knows what, to who knows who... and me... I chose to sit indian style and just enjoy the spectrum, the scenery, and the solitude.

And it was exactly what I needed.

The trail home wasn't lit at ALL, so I had to carefully walk all the way back to the cottage through cow patties and slipped in the mud (no pictures of that... it might not have been mud) to arrive at the cottage.

Sunday morning came TOO quickly and the ladies were already kicking me out, so I went over to Glastonbury Abbey to get one more tourist trap out of the way. I realized this city was a kind of pagan spiritual place too... home of black magic and white magic, wicca people... pretty much no matter what you do or don't worship, you're accepted here. Scary though, all these goth folks all around...

The Abbey was once again incredibly ornate... TOO ornate for Henry VIII. He tore most of it down because he wanted to have the biggest and best of everything.

Around the Abbey, there were monks, people dressed up as peasants, the town crier, and scattered tour guides around.

Kinda looks like the southern oracle from Neverending Story right?! I've got a picture of Artex too, but everyone's seen a white horse before.

Of course stupid Facebook has a bunch more of my pictures, but I just wanted to maybe do a once weekly entry into this blog thing, just in case I do get so tired of friending, accepting, ignoring, tagging, status updating, messaging, and all the crud that goes along with it... so tired of all that stuff that I just cancel my account altogether.

Last week, I really wanted a rewind button to a much less stressful time. I needed a few of my friends to press pause when they pressed stop. I needed to escape because I know my life's in fast-forward, so there's not hardly any time at all to play.

TO THE WINCHESTER!!!

LOST SEASON 6. MUST FIND IT TONIGHT. DO NOT DISTURB LATER, unless you're Jordan, in which case you should PLEASE disturb.

So nice over here! Weather's been rockin', sun's been out, I'm almost completely sorted in this mug!

Let's see, weekend was just filled with the insides of various pubs and taverns including this one:

The Eclipse Inn. Known to be one of the last places in England that allowed public hangings! Ghost story alert: some chick was supposedly innocent, got hanged, screamed something in latin and walks the upper balcony sometimes after closing. The managers tell me they saw an entire plate of food get slammed against the wall with no one touching it! Eerie!

So we left this quaint little pub and went to a MUCH louder place, The Pitcher and the Piano bar. There was no piano.

There were people like these... (Grace and Willa bein' cool)

And Steve Carell...

And a lot of other folks. Good weekend though. Clayton and I walked the streets of Winchester on Sunday and prepared for the week ahead.

So that brings us to this week! Morning ROUNDS! Got my pager all set up, haven't been paged yet, but I've SENT a page! Shadowed Dr. Roberts (the head respiratory guy) in his clinic all morning, and took ONE HECK OF A NAP afterwards. One guy just had OBVIOUS lung cancer that had metastasized to his back. The guy was SO miserable. It left a lasting impression on my heart. No, THAT cigarette might not give you cancer, but the 8004th one JUST MIGHT get your cells mad enough to proliferate like crazy. Poor guy.

So I remember widgets as those weird things M.C. Escher drew with three prongs on one end but it looked like two on the other... an impossible object... or the fabled things they talk about in Physics problems. "suppoooose a widget, mass 4kg, was propelled... yada yada"

But it's THIS over here:

Weird. Makes the locals think they're drinking draught beer maybe? Just weird to have a little ball floating around in your can.

TUESDAY, another HARD workout after a LONG day of doing rounds and trying to find where this and that ward were... I had to try my Spanish out with this patient, Alvarez, who was noticeably obtunded from some lung cancer that metastasized to his BRAIN. He'd give me the BIGGEST blank stares. Oh yeah he's a prisoner that got caught with $250,000 of COKE!! NO HANDCUFFS, NO SHACKLES. Yipesters!

Funny how all the old ladies are like "Hey Dr. Grove, you should really bring around the sexy young chaps" and I still blush. Let's see, Jordan girl or 75 year old lady that hacks up every color of the rainbow of sputum? A dingirl, of course.

Today I got to see a bronchoscopy and take a history from a man for like 30 minutes of how his lung problems started and he took me through it, month by month, from every episode of pneumonia, to pneumothorax, Hodgkin's lymphoma, vinblastine... which I seem to remember has pulmonary toxicity and it's used for testicular cancers... oh well, and he's getting his thoracoscopy on Friday morning. Dr. Jillian (a guy), and Dr. Saddiqui confirmed this. Jillian spoke French, so I got to try out my French... very surprised when he asked what part of France I'm from!! So I STILLL GOTT IT!!!

I'll leave this blog with a few pics from my walk home after working out! Until NEXT TIME!!

Royal Hampshire County Hospital. Mid-Evil? Medieval? What's the word? Oh, OLD. This archaic facade was quite humbling to drive up to... this is where I'll be spending my third year?

Nah it didn't phase me much. Grenada literally RAN OUT of fresh water a few times, so at least I know I'm in Winchestershire, the original capital of England. Lots of folks supposedly reside here because it's far enough away from London for these rich folks to be "from outside London", but close enough to get there if they need to.

After seeing a couple of lesbians FULL ON going at each other in the Tube station, and after getting out at Waterloo only to find the first good use of my umbrella, I made it to my room.

Lotsa skylights, which is good for a to-be morning person!! I wonder if this blogging stuff is going to eat away my allowed internet usage too badly.

It's 9:00 on day three over here, housekeeping lady just knocked... I said "come in", and she runs away. I guess there was a password or something that I didn't say. Maybe "come in, I'm in my boxers" would have been more inviting... probably would have scared her even more.

Well I don't know if I should leave this blog at a PG-13 level, talking about how I just had my Kellogg's Frosties (Frosted Flakes) and pomegranate juice, or if I can share pics like

A bar urinal...

Well Grace, one of my roommates, and I got WHIPPED in trivia last night! How about this one: "underground is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters U and D".

I was like "FALSE! Unkind, unwound, upload!! I even asked an English guy what the opposite of download is. He said upload, so I acted like I'd stumbled upon the right answer.

INCORRECT. Underground is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters U N D!!! Stupid accents. Totally reminds me of the days at the mental hospital with Michael Gale and his accent... "spelll the wuuuhhhd wuuulllld backwuuuuds".

Off to start this day of medicine! No clue why this font turned blue, because it's anything BUT how I'm feelin' today!

First blog EVER

Journal mom gave me... on the ground. I just can't bring myself to write and keep all this cool stuff that happens completely private! It's that social networking side of me that compels me to share... the fact that others have the same bug further proves the point that I should share "what's on my mind". And, based on a lot of other folks' blogs, I'm willing to bet that my stuff might be a wee bit cooler.
Sayin' I'm cool when I was in a salon for 3.5 hrs less than a week ago = first not cool thing on this blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y