anyone else disappointed with the late night selection of conan?

the first 2 pictures were from the drive home from homer...above is at the far end of turnigan arm. these are still remnants from the quake of '64 and the tsunami that followed. the water level rose with the tsunami temporarily and the salt water impacted the flora of the area.
the picture below is of mt redoubt...you can see that it's still steaming. the dome is building and supposedly we may still have more activity.

above is the homer spit as seen from the lookout enroute in/out homer. it's the hub of activity in homer.

below is blossom on todays walk...silly dog can find a mud puddle everywhere.

i'm probably still bitter cause leno beat out letterman for the carson spot to begin with. hehe. carson was still my favorite though. now i'm really dating myself since i watched the johnny carson late night shows. seemed weird that they didn't do guest hosts this time before selecting conan. he's okay, maybe he'll grow on me, but i was never too keen on staying up to watch his show to begin with.

lots of moose encounters this week so i'll post some pictures from those. the mama moose with her 2 little babies were chilling at the dog park all weekend. seems a strange place for a mom moose to select, but i hope people gave them lots of room so she didn't get spooked. i suppose there is minimal risk of bears with all those dogs running around and dogs don't eat baby moose so maybe that mama moose knows more than i think. the male moose with the lovely rack was at the trailhead this afternoon when i took the girls for thier walk. we went to prospect heights and did a loop in there. had to take a side loop to avoid the big moose after i took some pictures. don't think rio got a good whiff. blossom is great so she just sat quietly while i took pictures.

was at work this morning and decided to check my email. the news on yahoo said a plane went missing en route from rio to france. i hadn't realized that once the plane is over 300 miles off any shore they aren't on the radar anymore and instead just call and check in. sounds like another pilot may have spotted what looked like flames. over 220 people on board so that is a pretty major catastrophe. i always think of how horrible those last minutes are when you know your fate and have no power to do anything. of course, it also makes me think of the burmuda triangle and all the boats/planes that supposedly disappeared from that region. you never hear them talk about that area anymore. they used to always have shows about that. perhaps we now just find wrecks with newer equipment. the ocean is big and it's easy for our tiny planes/boats to sink and never be located. it took decades to locate the titanic and that was a pretty big ship. of course, there are probably those who still prefer to think the entire plane was taken off by aliens. really very sad though.

just finished working 3 nights. not bad really. my one gastric bypass gone bad patient seems to go nuts with her pain meds around 4-5 am each day. the second night it got really bad. she seemed pretty lucid so i went to check my other patient, upon return she was getting out of bed and tearing all the tubes out as she went! when 400 pound person decides to do something there just isn't much i'm going to do. my charge, tracy, and i tried to calm her down but she was hallucinating something awful and was paranoid. she blended reality with god knows what...we gave her the phone to call her husband. she called him a few times telling him to come get her as she was ready to go.... tracy tried to get the phone to let him know we were there with her and she grabbed the cords and started really ripping at it. by 7 am she was much more lucid again,but in the meantime she called 9-1-1 a few times to let them know she was being held against her will before her husband arrived. he was really great. can't imagine seeing your spouse like that...all crazed and non-sensical. that was the first time i've had a patient of mine call 9-1-1. they must get those calls all the time. i was in peds icu the last night. ended up with 2 peds patients and one not really picu patient. that kid was 2 and having a full on tantrum anytime she was awake. her parents were totally incapable of coping and i finally just sent them to another room to sleep while we calmed the kid and got her sleeping...which took 3 hours. of course, i remember my neice kate (who is now married with 3 of her own kids) she was a terror at times. that kid could really scream!! when they lived in the apartment attached to my folks house we had to rescue a few distaught baby sitters. she turned out great....i think the mom was comforted that other kids could scream for hours. she was able to get the kid back to sleep in just an hour when she woke at 2am. i think that was huge for her.

while i've been waiting for the load i've been watching a show on the history of ivf. very interesting...i love medical ethics and would love to work in ethics one day. funny that the couple that started the first clinic in the united states for ivf were actually recent retiree's. it's amazing what some people do. life doesn't end at any particular age, people can still have a major impact at any age. (ivf is invitro fertilization if you weren't aware). medicine is all abbreviations, i tend to assume they are universally known. one of my most used books that i carry back and forth to work with me is a book of medical abbreviations. it even includes lol-little old lady and flk-funny looking kid. i always loved the vet term adr-ain't doing right, a nice catch all. my dating abbreviation is ngb-nice guy but...i made that up.

anyway...there are so many ethical issues in medicine and i come across them with great regularity working in the icu and also working in peds. i also float to nicu on occasion and i'm telling you...that is a hotbed for ethical issues.

enjoyed dinner out with friends lesley and sandra. we all had may birthdays and wanted to just have a meal out to "celebrate" together. they hit a movie after, but i don't think i'm clear enough to sit through a 2.5 hour movie. good night...