Clear sailing? *updated*

We’re on an Alaska Airlines 737, waiting to taxi out. The skies are clear. We’re flying into Portland, not icy Salt Lake City. Everything should go off without a hitch.

We shall see . . .

… We’re in Portland. They canceled our scheduled flight and put us on one departing 25 minutes later. Supposedly, we should preboard in 5 minutes.

***

We preboarded 20 minutes later, then spent at least another half hour in the aircraft cabin waiting for them to de-ice the wings. I sat next to a big man who wanted to use his cell phone. He reeeally wanted to use that cell phone. They made him shut it, of course, but the longer we waited for that de-ice job, the more agitated he became. He was one of these loud, angry, polite guys. You know, the kind that hollers, “MAY I PLEASE ASK A QUESTION?” and you’re wondering if he’s packing a glass knife. He and the steward went back and forth arguing about the cell phone, until finally the steward said, “We can arrange for you to be able to use your cell phone, sir.”

“And leave me behind?”

I was shocked. What insight! Up to that point, I’d thought if IQ points were sticks, this guy wouldn’t have been able to make a fire.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fergit it, then.”

Uh, yeah.

But we’re here. In Medford. We made it. With all our luggage. We’re back at the Rogue Regency and we have 8:30 reservation for their restaurant. That’s how good their restaurant is — amazing, huh?

I suppose we could have driven back home tonight, three hours in the dark on winding, icy roads, but crashing here seemed the wiser option.

Oh, if I haven’t said it yet,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

D.

Valdis pwnd

I’ve spent the past month with an arrogant elf, a dryad with PMS, and a half-giant with fewer IQ points than toes. We’ve been teleporting back and forth across Aranna, searching for bits of a legendary shield. There was this Azunite scholar who kept showing up after every big fight. These academic types are such wusses. So me (I was a dryad chick named Chloe) and my droogs would clobber some big-assed monster with about a billion hit points, then the scholar would show up, say, “Good job! Carry on,” and refuse to answer my questions. THEN the bastard turns evil in the end and steals my rebuilt magical shield!

Always knew that asshole was up to no good. He showed his true colors when it came time to defeat the primo baddie, Validis.

Frankly, I’m not sure what happened. Every so often this big, booming voice in the sky would provide my party with backstory; I’m pretty sure the uppity elf would pay attention, but as for me, my eyes glazed over. If you’ve seen one magical sword clash with a magical shield leading to the devastation of the Age, you’ve seen them all. And what’s the point, anyway, when every bloody time I defeat one Great Evil, a New Great Evil arises? It’s like trying to kill Freddy Krueger: as long as heroes like me are willing to travel great distances, murdering hordes of malignant beasts and undead along the way, there’s always some quintessential villain ready to step up to the plate. And then it’s kill Valdis, or kill son-of-Valdis, or kill Valdis’s underling who has been plotting Valdis’s destruction all along, and we’re all pawns, I tell you, pawns! and then the stars rearrange themselves (I kid you not) and it’s time to either (A) replay the whole damned game at a more brutal difficulty level, or (B) take the plunge and kill the New Great Evil.

I could wish for a lot of things, though, like the ability to look up. Is that asking so much? Three Dungeon Siege games I’ve played (four, since I just bought “Broken World”) and my character still can’t look up. A chick likes to look at the sky sometimes, you know? And sex. Chloe was so desperate by the end of her journey, even the half-idiot half-giant was beginning to look good. Every town had a magic shop, an enchanter, and providers of weapons and armor, but try and find a rent boy, just try. I finished the game with over a million gold pieces. Chloe should have been able to go reverse cowgirl on Johnny Depp for half that much.

A better story would have been nice, too. Chloe wouldn’t give a damn, but I do.

D.

Christmas Eve

Things are always so slow this time of year, comment-wise. You would think people were doing stuff with their families or something. (But I thought most of my readers were agnostics or atheists. What gives?)

Truly, though, the hit counter is as lively as ever. And what are most people searching for on Christmas Eve? What inspires them to Christ-like feats of love for their fellow man? A busty, luscious Rachel Weisz (Kosher for Christmas!) Clinical proof that Jennifer Lopez got back. The ever popular Real or Fake? boobs contest. Sex, in other words.

Well, Jew or not, far be it from me to show callous disregard for the giving spirit of Christmas. Here’s Salma Hayek’s reaction to me coming out of the shower:

Thanks, Salma. Couldn’t have done it without ya, babe.

What was I doing a year ago? Not posting, apparently. On Dec. 23, 2006, I posted a recipe for involtini. Year before that, I posted a question on ending the first book of my trilogy with a cliffhanger. I’d say Salma is an improvement.

***

What are we watching on Christmas Eve? A Christmas Story, naturally. It never gets old. We saw it when it first came out and we must have seen it a dozen or more times since. My favorite part? Ralphie feeling up the leg-lamp. Or maybe Ralphie’s little brother singing, “Meatloaf, meatloaf, double beet-loaf. I HATE meatloaf.” I used to use that wav file for error messages on my old 486.

My reading material for Christmas Eve: Christopher Moore’s Lamb. Loving it. I’m amazed how Moore makes it funny and loving and reverential, all in one. I can tell he’s building toward a tragic ending. Do believing Christians see their Messiah as a tragic figure? I suspect not. Christ’s death, if I remember correctly, is supposed to be a good thing.

But I’m still too much a Jew, or a doctor, or I don’t know what, but to me, death is never a good thing*.

And that’s all he wrote, Christmas Eve, 2007. Merry Christmas to all my goyim, tribe, and heathen friends! Time for me to light a fire in the fireplace; Santa’s toes are bound to be cold.

D.

*Except as an end to suffering — I’ll grant that. It’s a bitch, though, don’t you think? Saying death is “good” for that reason, it’s like the old joke: Why are you banging your head against the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop.

Bodily woes

Today, in the wee hours of the morning, I could picture the headlines . . .

Local Doctor Bleeds to Death From Ass

Family Grateful for Life Insurance Policy

. . . but as you may have guessed, I’m still here to write about it.

(more…)

Midlife crises

celebrating midlife crisis, originally uploaded by Orrin.

Orrin writes,

This got a little out of hand. I had no idea that birthday candles could “go inferno” so easily. The look of horror on my face is nearly spontaneous. It turned out okay. Eyelashes are overrated.

My midlife crisis isn’t about the loss of youth. Like Orrin’s eyelashes, my youth was highly overrated, and I’m well quit of it. I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been, I’m in control of my destiny, and, for the most part, life is good.

My midlife crisis isn’t about some newly detected awareness of mortality, either. I’ve been death-obsessed since my early twenties — thanks in equal parts to med school and my wife’s way-too-young baptism by serious illness.

I’m thinking that my midlife crisis, if I have one, will be about the choices I’ve made, could have made, could still make. Because I keep thinking that I should have done more than this.

Maybe it’s science fiction that left me with impossible expectations. Not only have I not saved the universe from transdimensional collapse, I haven’t even saved the planet. I haven’t walked on Mars, haven’t contacted extraterrestrials, haven’t traveled through time. And, sure, as I got older I understood that some things simply didn’t happen (no one gets their own personal starship, not even Bill Gates’s kid), yet I kept thinking I’d make more of a difference.

I know I should be content with what I have. I make a difference to my family and to my patients. Isn’t that enough? But the world is so fucked up and I don’t feel like I’m doing anything about it! After all, there are plenty of things a doctor can do to act on the global stage — take a job with WHO or Doctors Without Borders, to name a couple.

But I couldn’t do that without putting my family through some serious grief.

Well, anyway, sorry to whine. It’s Jewish guilt, that’s what it is. It’s a consequence of God not telling you what He wants from you, not when you’re a teenage believer and certainly not when you’re a middle-aged agnostic. So you’re always wondering if you chose wrong.

When I searched Flickr for “midlife crisis,” I found lots of car pictures, a few motorcycle pictures, and only one cute young woman.

Heidi’s Midlife Crisis: Braids!

Yeah. That’s what I need — braids.

D.

We need weapons.

One of my patients has a digital anemometer. With Sunday night’s storm, he clocked 90 mph winds.

Karen presented me with a list: axe, flares, dried food, rope, multi-tool, first aid kit, water, etc. You know, one of those lists. I spent Monday afternoon going from store to store, buying emergency supplies. Some are ingenious, like this block of magnesium with a flint built into it. You use your knife to scrape magnesium shavings, then strike your knife against the flint to ignite the magnesium shavings, which in turn ignites your kindling. Magnesium block plus flint: ten bucks. Box of matches: yeah, yeah, I know, but magnesium is neat.

I’m proud of the axe I bought. It’s an axe on one side, a maul on the other.

“For pounding posts into the ground,” I told Karen. “And then we tie rope to the posts.”

I have no idea why I would be pounding posts in the ground and tying rope to them, but it seems a useful thing to be able to do. Survivorman does it all the time. He also distills his own urine.

“We need weapons,” Karen said. I didn’t point out that the axe/maul makes one mean looking weapon, but I guess it wouldn’t stand up to a real firearm. “If things go to hell, do you suppose people invade big houses first, or trailers?”

We have a big house and our primary possessions are books. In the post-apocalyptic world, if you need reading material, invade our house.

Someone, one of my readers, I think, once recommended a shotgun. There is (my reader wrote) no better deterrent than the sound of a shotgun getting cocked. Shotguns have visceral appeal: point and shoot, little or no aiming necessary. Shotguns are not a surgeon’s weapon.

I need to buy another five gallons of water, dried food to last several days, and a radio. But what kind of radio? A two-way radio, I think, something primitive, something that won’t be destroyed by the electromagnetic pulse. A two-way radio so that I can call for help when my zombified neighbors start breaking down my doors and I have run out of shotgun cartridges.

And I need Cipro, for the anthrax attack.

Then I’ll be safe.

D.

Can a brain limp?

Yesterday, I slept in until past 10. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I had been coughing up my kishkes the night before, though, and kept dosing myself (never mind with what, but I think elephant tranquilizers would have been more gentle) until I could sleep without bothering Karen.

Last night, knowing I would have to wake up today at 7, I showed more restraint in my choice of remedies. Too much restraint, apparently, since I woke up coughing at 5. Dragged myself into work, where the power promptly failed.

More from my rhinovirus-addled brain below the cut . . .

(more…)

Oooh, scary pumpkin!

As usual, we’re late carving Mr. Pumpkin. No genitalia this time; Jake and I wanted to capture the look of pure evil.

I present to you the leader of the National Socialist Pumpkin Worker’s Party, Adolf Pumpkin.

This made more sense before the rain washed off our black marker-drawn hair. I’ll have to photoshop it back in for you.

Adolf Pumpkin, ally to Benito Zucchini, foe to Josef Onion, terror to inferior squashes throughout Europe.

We’ll give him the treatment he deserves; we’ll launch him down the hillside. His head will burst open, his stringy brains will be food for crows.

Live-blogging tonight, folks.

D.

Am I weird?

Friends Forever, originally uploaded by petranella.

I have male friends, but it would never occur to me to write to them or call them, let alone confide in them. When I call my old friend Stan, which isn’t as often as I should, I’m delighted when his wife answers. I have a far easier time talking to her, in fact.

All of my really close friends are women.

How about you? Are most of your friends same sex, opposite sex, or is there no trend?

Sorry, I never figured out how to make the polling gizmo work. You’ll just have to leave a comment.

D.

PS: Don’t know if I’ll have a Cosmo Thirteen for you tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty exhausted tonight, and those Cosmo Thirteens are usually a two- to three-day affair.