Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Chicago thus far
I’ve been here only twice before: first for my written boards, then for my orals. Yeah, they couldn’t manage to hold them both in a two-day interval. If they had, how could they have justified charging separately for the two tests? (Solution: charge double for the two. We still would have saved a bundle on plane fares and hotel costs.)
My impressions from before: not much. When you’re taking your boards, you’re in high stress mode. Forever after, you tell yourself, hospitals and potential employers will want to know if you passed the first time through. (In reality? Not so much.) So all I remember is that Chicago and That Big Lake Out There are remarkably beautiful, and that I wouldn’t mind coming back under less stressful circumstances.
And here I am, twelve years later.
I’m here for my Academy’s annual meeting. Haven’t been to one of these since the one that was held in San Antonio — ’97, I think? And I didn’t really take that one too seriously. These meetings are meant to be educational, and there’s LOTS of opportunities for taking classes. It’s also intended as a networking function, a cheap way to interview potential partners (or be interviewed by potential partners/employers) without spending too much money. For us older folks, it’s a way to meet up with a lot of our classmates from residency. Oh, and then there’s all that vendor swag. If I didn’t have to carry it all back with me on the plane, I’d be a little swag whore, oh yes.
***
I left the hotel shortly after 6, allotting twice as much time to get to my 8:00 class as I thought I would need. Good thing, too, since I got lost, had to find a Walgreen’s so that I could buy a map, and when I finally got to the Sheraton Towers, learned that the convention is at the Convention Center (derrrr, as Shaina would say). I had already parked in the Pay With Your Left Nut parking lot, so I figured it would actually be cheaper to take a taxi. I got to my class with 15 minutes to spare.
Great class — just under four hours of instruction on diagnosing and treating the dizzy patient. Usually, about one hour into a class like this I’m (A) yawning like mad, (B) wondering if what the lecturer is saying makes sense to anyone else in the room, (C) asking myself why, why, why did I spend hundreds of dollars to fly out for this when I could have bought a couple of pertinent books for far less, and (D) playing the “If this room full of people were stranded on desert island, who would I prefer to shag” game. But not today. (Except for D. That’s inevitable.) No, today I actually paid attention and learned a good number of things. It wasn’t a perfect seminar, but it still blew by way too fast. Rare that I wish a seminar was twice as long.
I think I’ll still buy those books, though.
***
Chicagoans drive like maniacs. They’re worse than me. They make me look sedate. Folks on the freeway drive twenty miles over the speed limit, and creep up on your ass even if you’re in the middle lane. On the other hand, there are so many left-handed exits, perhaps the middle lane is considered the fast lane here. I hadn’t thought of that.
***
After the talk, I wanted to get lunch. I spoke with a lady whose whole job is to talk to conventioneers about where they’d like to eat. She told me that Chinatown was only a mile away, so I decided to walk it.
I suppose I should have asked about the neighborhood, but jeez. The neighborhood around the convention center is nice enough, why should the next mile be any different? But it was tenement followed by gated-off condemned building followed by scary dark dip under an overpass (I figured I would survive, since a woman with about $2000 worth of camera gear around her neck had just made it through, coming the other way).
Made the mistake of making eye contact with one gentleman who said, “How are you doing today?”
“Fine.” Oh, crap.
“I’m not a bum,” he said, seeking to reassure me. Which is why he said it twice. “I’m not a bum. But I need fifty cents on my metro card.” Or whatever the hell the thing was he showed me. But okay, fine, it’s all about reassurance, and he didn’t look like a wino or a druggie. “I just got out of Cook County Jail –”
Yeah, record scratch, there goes the reassurance. And here I was about to be a smart ass and ask him if he could change a hundred. I gave him my smallest bill, a five, he thanked me for it, and that was that.
Chinatown was fine. I had an inexpensive dim sum lunch which I took pictures of with my new cell phone. If I had image massaging software on this laptop, I’d post ’em now, but I guess it’ll have to wait.
***
After dim sum, I took a cab back to my parking structure, which was beneath an AMC Multiplex. What the hell, they’re going to take my left nut whether I spend 6 hours here or 8, so I decided to see a movie. I’d wanted to see the new Coen Brothers movie, but I was too late for that one. Instead, I saw Righteous Kill, which stars Pacino and De Niro in a serial killer flick. Fun movie, although seeing De Niro with Carla Gugino (whom I last saw playing Lucille in Sin City) felt a little eew. Like, he’s nearly thirty years older than her eeew. Her character was just kinky enough to make the relationship believable, though.
Was it a good movie? They played fair with the mystery, but I really do think the ending was needlessly complex. The whole structure was needlessly complex. With a more linear timeline, with more straightforward storytelling, they could have set up a cleaner mystery. But no, they had to go for the — oh, fine, I won’t spoil it.
Go. See it. Tell me what you think.
***
So far, I haven’t been too lucky with meals. I had Cheez-its last night . . . got to my hotel too late for anything else . . . and tonight, I had dinner at a so-so Italian place. Not bad, not great. I was lost and needed directions, so my original plan (get back to the hotel and hit google maps to find a good restaurant) was scuttled.
After finding my way back to the hotel, I hit Google Maps, found a Barnes and Noble nearby, almost got lost again getting there (apparently, no one around here believes in laying out city streets on a grid), found it, bought some books. I purchased Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up, Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies (stop snickering, Chris), and something which will make me very popular with my son. Okay, so if he reads my blog, the surprise is spoiled. Bad daddy.
I stopped off at the supermarket to get some booze. Nothing fancy, just a four-pack of Bartles & James margarita cooler. I rarely drink at home, but when I’m away from my family, I feel the need. One of these is enough to get the tension out of my neck, enough to get my ears singing so that I can’t hear all the other bullshit in my head (no command voices, thankfully), but not enough to get maudlin.
Not that I ever needed alcohol to get maudlin.
See ya tomorrow, droogs.
D.
…asking myself why, why, why did I spend hundreds of dollars to fly out for this when I could have bought a couple of pertinent books for far less…
It’s like that in the Internet marketing world too. Lots of IM gurus are going to videos these days. It’s nice when they have a fast forward option, but many don’t do that. In everyone of these I’ve seen so far–which admittedly isn’t many because I generally won’t watch a marketing video–80% of the time is spent jibber-jabbering about how great it’s going to be and how much money you can make and how good that is and so on, until you finally get to the point where they start telling you something useful.
Much easier with text. Then, you can skip the fluff. And, unlike a video, you can skim through all the fluff to make sure you’re not missing anything.
Wasted a half hour today listening to one of these things. They sent eMails promoting this thing, and it sounded like a good idea. You had to register to listen to it, which I did. All the eMails talked about how great an opportunity it would be and how great it will be to be a part of it, but scant on the details which would be explained later.
So, I listen to over 25 minutes of this audio where, once again, they’re spending all the time talking it up. Finally they start talking about how you need to tell them if you’re interested in participating and what exactly you have to do to sign up. And, by that I mean the minute details of where to send the eMail and what to put in the subject header so they will spot it. Still, what is it you’re going to have to do? You still don’t know, yet they’re telling you that signing up isn’t to figure out if you want to do it; when you’re signing up you’re making a commitment to do it.
I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of committing to do something that I don’t know what it is I’m making a commitment to do!
Finally, they start giving some scant details, at which point I realize I’m never go to qualify for this thing. Ugh. They could have saved my time, and themselves some website data transfer costs, if they had given more details to begin with.
On the plus side, I didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to listen to it, but, still, I’d like those 30 minutes of my life back.
I didn’t know we were talking about med school!
I have a hunch there are a LOT of things like that. Think of all the young kids out there signing up for the military. Saw an ad for the military in the movie theater today . . . I think it can be summarized: Join the Marines, and you too can be a hard-jammin’ Bruce Springsteen clone — raining death from the skies in your very own attack helicopter!!! — only to go jammin’ again when you get back to the base. And they’ll learn you stuff about computers, too.
But, there you still have some idea what you’re signing up for. Lots of things try to paint a rosy picture of what you’re getting into, but you still have some idea what it is you’re getting into.
With your example, you know that if you join the military, you could be sent off to war. Even in peacetime, that’s a risk. You may not know where you’ll end up, but you still have the general idea.
Imagine, though, that someone came to your classroom, told you about a great opportunity they had for you, that you would make a bunch of money, and learn a lot of skills that would give you an opportunity for a variety of jobs. Just sign on the dotted line…
But, you have no idea whether you’re signing up to be a soldier, a priest, a doctor, a garbageman, a coal miner, etc.
Careful with the margaritas. My little sister is visiting from California and we accidentally drank too many Friday night. I’m still suffering. Any cures you can suggest?
Just a couple of comments, well maybe 3:
The Chicago drivers? In southern CA, drivers also drive 20 miles over the speed limit and creep up your ass. I got a ticket on California Blvd recently for going 12 miles over the limit.
About the “bum”: it was his lucky day that he met you.
About the usefulness of the class: that IS rare. Learn anything about positional vertigo you didn’t know already?
just so you know, you can send pictures directly from your phone into a facebook album…then from there you could save them to your comp and post on the blog. i’m not 100% sure how you START doing this, you have to like register your phone or something, but i’m sure it’s not hard. 🙂
have fun in chicago! i’ve only really been into the city once, when my cousin had her bat mitzvah. i remember liking it, but not much of why.
oh, and it’s “durrrrrr” not “derrrrrr”. or “duh”. lol 🙂
Worse drivers than you?! Were they using the turn lane as their own personal passing lane? hmmm…. I am so glad that you are getting out and about! We are headed back to the windy city at the end of Oct…
Worse drivers than you?! Were they using the turn lane as their own personal passing lane? hmmm…. I am so glad that you are getting out and about! We are headed back to the windy city at the end of Oct…
I’m too tired to snicker at the moment. Just don’t tell me how it ends …
Dan: shoulda been a garbage man.
Clean,honest work.lucie: too late to help you, but maybe for next time . . . the key to treating hangover is to recognize that it’s due in large part to dehydration and aldehydes. Aldehydes (think formaldehyde — got it?) are the toxic waste products of alcohol. You can’t do much about them, but you can take a tylenol or an aspirin for the headache. So: hydrate like crazy, replace electrolytes if needed (gatorade, for example), and take an aspirin. Drink some coffee, too, if you’re a habitual coffee drinker, since you don’t want the caffeine withdrawal headache on top of everything else.
Sis, no, they all assumed we knew how to treat BPPV! I don’t think there’s much to add there. I did learn, however, that they’re recommending treatment of vestibular neuritis with oral steroids provided you catch it within 24 hours of onset. But that doesn’t help you.
Come back, Shaina! And this is a good time of year for it. The weather has been damn near perfect. A little warm, but not too far off my preference.
Catrina, YES, they ARE worse than me! Hard to believe, huh? And I only did that once, and you’ll never let me forget it . . .
Chris: something tells me he’ll survive 🙂
GPS Navigational System. Just request one when you rent your car. I didn’t think your driving was so bad!
Leann, Catrina beat it out of me.
Bartels & James are still around? That’s like so retro!