Wait a second

I know I know I know. I am still in the middle of the honeymoon. But I don't feel like talking about that at the moment. Basically, I can't summon the energy to put together that many coherent strings of thoughts. I am on day  13 of 19 straight. That is 13 days of waking up at 5am. 13 days of watching the sunrise. 13 days of having flashing lights accompany my drive to work. It isn't all bad. I get to see lots of bunnies. Bunnies are like squirrels here. No. They really are. They are adorable. Granted, working both days this weekend was by choice. Matt is still up in Seattle and comes back this week, so I offered to work both days so that I have next weekend completely off. Woohoo!

UniMed (what Creighton calls their general medicine teams) is a pretty tough month. My supervising resident and one of my attendings said that it is likely one of the hardest months. They even said harder than ICU (a resident can only follow 4 patients max in the ICU). I saw 8 the other morning. No, they aren't the sickest of patients. Some of them are rocks - waiting placement in a nursing home or what not. Some of these rocks, however, are difficult. And pokey. And remind you daily that they exist. I have unfortunately had my first encounter with a patient with whom I am fighting that whole countertransference thing. I think I have that right. Countertransference is when I treat them differently based on how they treat me. I think. Either way, I have a patient who isn't super happy with me ever no matter when I see her. Friday, she really got my water boiling. I left her with my happy voice on, but I told me co-intern that he would be taking over her care. I don't want to compromise someone's health simply because they are pushing my buttons. I believe this is the right choice.

One of the hardest parts of this month - at least early in the month - was my lack of cooking/baking and working out. With Matt gone, I don't care if dinner is at 8, so I have found plenty of time to workout and cook. While I really don't cook anything crazy and I haven't even been 'in' to cooking that long, it makes me happy. Being in the kitchen relieves stress for me. Almost as much as being in the gym or working out relieves my stress. In August I start on GI at the VA. I am hoping (but not getting my hopes up) that being on a consulting services calms my life down a little bit. We will see

BTW: Omaha is hot right now. Not like hot like "cool." Hot like hell hath descended upon us

Oh Chicago

Sorry for the hiatus. Intern year has finally started, and I have been like a chicken with my head cut off. Lost my brain, feathers everywhere, no sense of direction. Ever. 1 week down...51 to go (minus vacation of course). I will update about our Chicago trip first then hit on work.


We took off early from Detroit and drove past where old Tigers' Stadium used to be. It looked a little scary. We had been told that all the bars right through that area (lots of hole in the wall sports bars), look dead from the outside but somehow still manage to get busy. We will take their word for it. Headed west and eventually south to go through Ohio. I kept trying to get pictures of "Welcome to ______!" but amazingly always managed to miss the sign. The few times I was actually ready, no sign was there to welcome us. Shame.


Our route took us through Gary, Indiana. Boy am I glad I don't live there either. About that time, Matt's stomach started to bug him. I told him that it was because he didn't eat breakfast. I know that if I don't eat for >12hrs or so, I start to get nauseous. Always have, always will. Feed the beast regularly. Chicago driving was a little stressful. This was probably the only time we snapped at each other over directions. We eventually get to the hotel, which was actually the top 10 floors of an office building. Very strange. It was a little before noon, and our room wasn't ready yet :( We leave our bags in the car and head out for Giordano's pizza!!!!!


Last fall when we went to Chicago, we went on a pizza tour where we got to sample several deep dish pizzas. This was our favorite. We walk over there (not the main one because that one is always way too busy) and get seated. Matt is feeling even worse now. I assure him once he gets something in his stomach that he will feel better. Again, being cheap, we don't get an appetizer. Sigh. Well actually, that wouldn't have helped. About 30 minutes later (5 minutes til pizza!) Matt gets stage 5 watery mouth. We have all been there. Whether with the flu, food poisoning, or drinking, you know that moment from which you can't turn back. You need a bathroom. Stat. Matt excuses himself. He returns 10minutes later, pale as a ghost, while I nom on some oh so good pizza. He tries a bite. And heads to the bathroom again. When he returns, he says "Pay the bill and box it up" just before he heads outside. Sigh. Pizza experience ruined.


I struggle to find Matt outside as he is in a bush losing his stomach. He says he feels better and we can walk around. We made a good attempt, but he starts to get dizzy and weak. Back we go to the hotel! We are about a mile away, and all I can picture is him doing down on the sidewalk and having to go get the car to get him. There is no way we are paying for a cab :D He stops at more than one garbage can to do his thing. He mumbles incoherent things at me. He gets stomach contents in his beard. But we make it back. Alas, our room was still not ready. Another heavy sigh. We chill in the cool lobby. I work on my puzzle book. Matt frequents the bathroom. 230 rolls around (300 is check in time), and I urgently request that we get our room. Stat. Of course she needs to talk to Matt since the room is under him name. OMG. We make it to the room just in time for another bathroom break. I get him some 7up and crackers, and once he falls asleep, I leave. 

View from our room

Flying guy!

To Navy Pier I go!

Here are the pics from my solo walk (above)

Awesome sandwich

Matt pretty much slept all night. Needless to say, the game was a no go. In general Chicago was a bust. I told Matt he owes me another Chicago trip. He feels bad about the whole thing. We have no clue why he got sick. I never felt anything wrong. The only difference in our food was that he had some ranch with the pizza the night before. I had none. Maybe? Maybe. Our contacts were all the same, so I feel that that isn't likely. Here are the delicious foods I ate all by my lonesome.

You can't tell, but he is sweating

On to intern year. Oh. My. Goodness. For those of you in medical school: stay in 4th year as long as possible. I mean, I have done a lot of hard things, but I think this takes the cake. As with medical school, it isn't that what I am doing is super difficult. Pretty much anyone could write notes and orders. The hard part is how much of it I have to do on top of all the other little things like dictations and calling social workers. I am getting a handle on it a little more, and this will most likely be one of my harder months. Still though. I did at least get a surprise golden weekend (48 hours completely off)!! Amazing! Matt leaves Tuesday morning (5AM flight!!!!) for a couple weeks, so I am going to be stocking the freezer! 

So this is Detroit

Now that I took a little break I completely forget how I was formatting these posts. Sigh. I am a stickler for similar formatting. It takes me forever to load my ipod if for some unknown reason I lose all my music, which has happened more than once. I have had orientation going on, so that is my excuse :D

View of Canada from GM building

We left Pittsburgh the morning of the 10th (I think) heading to the great city of Detroit. Both of us had heard so many things about the state of the city, so we were excited to get to see it for ourselves. That, and the fact that the Mariners were playing the Tigers, made the 5 hour drive fast. Okay, fast is a bit of an exaggeration but still. Our drive was pretty uneventful, and the GPS never steered us wrong. Whoop!

On the way into the city, we passed a lot of factories. Matt thought they looked empty. I didn't so much, but I agreed with him as to not seem like I was contradicting just for contradicting's sake. There was no denying the emptiness, however, when we pulled off the interstate. My goodness. Below is the first building we say. Almost all the glass was blown out. It was spooky looking, and it was still midday at this point. 

We headed to our hotel and checked in causing us to notice this on our hotel door:

And we were in a super nice hotel that needed a key card to take the elevator to the rooms. We, of course, were hungry, so we stopped here:

These two places have been on TV a lot battling against each other. A few decades back they were started by relatives both serving "authentic coney island dogs." Basically...chili cheese dogs with mustard and onions. We each ate one dog at both, and our winner is: American!!!!! For me, it was the winner because I liked the hot dog a little more and the chili a lot more.

After that we went walking giving us the opportunity to see all the abandoned buildings up close. My goodness people. There seemed to be no one. No one! We made it to a free tour of the GM building, which was actually pretty cool. It turns out that Detroit hit its high population in the 50s. After that (not just with the demise of the car industry), people started moving to the suburbs. The GM building was built in the 70s in an attempt to draw people back into the city. Turns out it didn't work. Sigh. We walked around a little more after the tour before heading back to the hotel.

As we got there, it started to pour! We weren't worried about getting wet (we aren't made of sugar afterall), but our concern was that the game would be cancelled. We headed out for a wet wet walk just to see more abandonment. No people hitting up Friday happy hours. No cute little stores. In fact, a sign just north of the baseball stadium read: We strongly suggest you don't park north of this sign. We could see why. Crumbling houses. Burned out buildings. When night came, only about 30% of the high rises had lights on - that includes either offices on the inside or lights to show the architecture on the outside. 

Enough with the sadness! Tigers stadium was actually really really cool inside and out. The scoreboard and crowd interaction was a bit lacking though. The game ended up starting on time, and we got cheap seats up high. The Mariners even won! Whoop! We head out just as the great fireworks show started because we wanted to make it back to the hotel (via walking) while people were still around. Tons of people came in from the suburbs for the game, but they just head right back out afterwards. On the way, we stopped for pizza (weird) and ate it at the hotel. Overall it was a very weird experience. We agree we would go back to visit the other parts of the state, but we would probably never return to Detroit. : /

MILES TRAVELED DAY 4

Land: 286 miles

The winner!

Fist bump to the extreme

Church we found

There are actually tall buildings. You just can't see them

Where old Tigers Stadium used to be

Therapy in Pittsburgh

This was supposed to be at the end, but this is the view from the stadium

Matt hates Pittsburgh. And when I say hate, I mean hate. Ever since the Seahawks lost to the Steelers a few years back, he has had a lot of emotional baggage that we, as a couple, have to carry around. Our brief stint in the city helped relieve some of this pent up anger.

We left Cincinnati in the morning for an evening game of the Pirates vs the Arizona Diamondbacks. While Matt is a World Geography teacher, apparently neither of us know the exact details of each and every American state. Turns out, on the way from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, you go through West Virginia! Mark that one off our list! It was only 10minutes if that, but it still counts. Pittsburgh had some pretty cool tunnel thing coming into it and a whole lot of bridges. This was actually the one and only time that the Navigation tool on my phone failed us. She said take exit 7B and it was really 1B, so it threw us all off. After a 2mile detour we were at our hotel: DoubleTree. They had a room ready for us and even upgraded us since we said we were on our honeymoon (heck, you get to do it once, why not get all the perks out of it that you can). Our room was awesome! We decided to start doing our usual thing - walking.

After about 5 minutes outside we were both hot and hungry, which makes for two very grumpy newlyweds. On my list for Pittsburgh was Primanti Brothers. They are on Food Network and Travel Channel a lot. Basically their claim to fame is putting your fries and your slaw on your sandwich. We both got the same thing because I panicked while ordering, but it all turned out okay. After our oh-so-filling lunch, we walked a little longer and then headed back to the hotel. Just as we were relaxing, someone knocked on the door. Now, when you travel alone (ie, not with your basketball team) you don't expect anyone knocking on the door. My heart started racing a little faster, as my mind went worst case scenario of course (it is a cross I have to carry). Turns out it was just...room service!!!!! The hotel sent us a bottle of champagne and hand dipped chocolate covered strawberries. My goodness. Those were some of the best strawberries I have ever had. Then we got to throw back the champagne because it was almost time to leave for the game.

Turns out we actually really liked Pittsburgh's stadium. Again, like Cincinnati, it was right on a river. Great view of downtown, some cool architecture, etc etc. Cheap tickets were a little more spendy here though. After doing our typical full walk of the stadium, we started racking up our free things. Matt manages to schmooze us into some upgraded club level seats, which was awesome. If I keep him around for nothing else, I will keep him around for that. I kid, I kid; I will keep him around for many reasons. :D I forget who won the game, but we both really liked this stadium.

On the way home we were slightly hungry, so we stopped and got some pitas at a Greek place. They were good, and we didn't get poisoned, but the place may have been a little sketch looking back at it. Tada! Pittsburgh! I am sure some other things happened, but being a couple days out, I sort of forget things.

MILES TRAVELED DAY 3

Land: 286miles

Bridges!!!

Nom nom nom nom

So good!!!

Nice glow of sweat going on

Cincinnati Pics

This is Columbus actually, just wanted to take a pic

The scoreboard. I was hot by this point

It worked this time!!!!

Skyline chili dog!

Our awesome sign! Bottom said: Remain married

Us in Kentucky looking at Ohio

Cincinnati

If there is nothing else I learned on our adventures, I at least learned how to spell some cities without writing them down including: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee. I know you all might be saying, "Aren't you smarter than that Becky? Do I really trust you with my life?" My answers: yes, I am smart but bad at spelling in my head; no, don't trust me just yet. Onwards and upwards!!!


Wednesday the 8th found us in Cincinnati, OH for a day game of the Reds vs the Cubs. I swear that I almost died during this game. Day games are so hot! I also refused for us to buy a $5 bottle of water. We did get frozen lemonade though, which managed to bring me back from the brink of death. The stadium was cool because it was right on the river that separated Ohio from Kentucky! We sat in the cheap bleachers again and could see Kentucky the entire time. We also purchased a Skyline Chili (big thing there) dog. It was yummy. Definitely a different type of chili than I am used to. After the game we walked back to our hotel, which was finally ready for us to check in. I think we recovered from the heat for a while and relaxed.


One of Matt's coworders was also in Cincinnati grading papers for AP Human Geography (don't ask me what that means, I think it is similar to sociology). We met up with him and a few other graders and headed over to Kentucky for dinner (I didn't have anything planned here). Oh yeah, Kentucky!! Turns out it was hot over there too. It also turns out they didn't have a ton of options over there. We chose sort of a sports bar type looking place. After being seated, we realized how silly we were. It seriously took forever for our waitress to come talk to us. She was much faster moving away than moving toward our table. Sigh. Everyone but Matt & I just got wings to eat (we aren't the biggest wings people). I would say we made a better decision. We slowly walked back toward the hotel after our 2 hr below average dinner as not to start dripping sweat. The teacher peeps had a final night reception to attend, so Matt and I watched some hockey in the hotel bar. Eventually they convinced us to go upstairs with them as they had free drinks up there. Afterwards we went out with them for a little bit and then headed back to the hotel room to prepare for another awesome 5 hr drive. Whoop! I don't know if I would ever visit either Cleveland or Cincinnati again. I wouldn't avoid necessarily but I wouldn't optionally go back again. They were just 'meh" to me. But here are some more pictures!!!


MILES TRAVELED DAY 2
Land: 250 miles


Okay, I can't get the pics to load. For another day!!

Cleveland Rocks

We are back from Breckenridge. Those stories to come later.

Our honeymoon journey continued.

On June 7th we took off on a one way flight to Cleveland, OH. While Matt strongly strongly prefers the aisle seat, I made him choose a window seat (Southwest Air) as for us to see the flooding going on along the Missouri River. Note to future city developers: don't build your airport on a flood plain near a river. The day after we left there was going to be a big meeting about the best plan to keep the airport from flooding. To date they have built up the levees. There is currently some standing water on the airport side of the levee, but air traffic continues as normal. Yikes. Back to the main story.

We arrived in Cleveland and picked up the rental car - a silver Hyundai Elantra. We both really liked this car. It got great gas mileage - 37mpg or so. My car gets 21 on a good week. The game was a 7pm game, and being 3pm, we were hungry then. My basic job for this honeymoon was to research where to eat in each city. Our first stop was Melt. I had heard the place is normally PACKED, but going at an odd time to the 2nd, less "cool" location meant we got seated right away. The menus were on old albums. We meant to take pictures of them, but we didn't. Don't worry though because we managed to take pics of our food.

<--My Gyro Melt

 <-- Matt’s some sort of Italian melt (cheese sticks & meatballs on there)

Following our orgasmic (I can say that now, I am a doctor and a wife) late lunch we checked in to our hotel: Embassy Suites!!!! I have wanted to stay in one since going to Disney World as a child. We stayed there then, and all I remember was free Shirley Temples in the evening. In fact, my little brother would insist we leave whichever park we were visiting to get back in time for happy hour (imagine a child saying that w/o being able to say his r’s). I don’t remember the free breakfast as much, but being there jogged my memory. I got all our hotels on Priceline and seriously saved big $$$$$. I tried to get all of them relatively close to the stadiums so that we could walk. Pretty much anything within 3 miles is walking distance for Matt & I, but we were closer than that for pretty much all of them. We hit up the manager’s reception for a free G & T before heading to the stadium. We bought cheap bleacher seats and ended up moving a few innings in to a closer seat. We made an awesome sign. I think we have a picture of it somewhere. I will post pictures at the end.

We decided prior to any of the games to get the same exact thing at every stadium (ie mini logo bat, magnet, etc). Being the money savers we are, we went with scorecards. They are only ever $1-2, which fits our budget perfectly. We also walked around the entire stadium to get every free thing we could. In Cleveland, we got a free shirt and umbrella. It was great. Again, being savers, we didn’t buy any food in the stadiums but did drop our jaws at how expensive all the beer was. We already knew that coming in, but it was still impressive. More impressive was the thought of how many people buy beer after beer in the stadium. I have a feeling that even when I am all grown up and making more money, I still won’t want to be spending $30 on beer alone in the stadium. That is so much more beer at home!!!

After the game (Cleveland beat the Twins), we walked back to our hotel via a mile detour to see Lake Erie. The great lakes amaze me. Seeing the ocean a bit growing up, it is easy to forget, when seeing that amount of water, that it really is just a lake. It is even weider when you see gigantic barges on the lake. The next morning we woke up early and hit up the free breakfast. We had a 5 hour drive ahead of us to make an afternoon game in Cincinnati. I love my smart phone because of the “Navigation” on the GMaps. I didn’t have to look up all the directions beforehand!!! Whoop.

MILES TRAVELED DAY 1

Air: 740m

Land: 13m

On the plane & ready to go!

Matt not smiling even though he just ate an awesome lunch

Free G & T

We took a pic like this at every stadium

Us in our original seats

Lake Erie at dusk