The Biggest Small Town

While running at Mission Trails on Friday morning, we crossed paths with an older gentleman wearing a hat with the initials "MD" on it. I was wearing my med school t-shirt. We crossed the same man's path when we were done with our run. He came up to me and said, "Excuse me, but I couldn't help but notice your MUSC shirt. When did you graduate?" It turns out that he is a retired MD from Columbia, SC, who is also an alumnus of my med school. He is good friends with the surgeons I used to work with when I was a tech.

Tonight was our good friends' wedding. We looked across the aisle and saw another good friend's ex-girlfriend, with whom we have gone on several double dates. Her date was a guy that Rowdy occasionally works with who has come over and played on our climbing wall. He's a high school friend of the groom.

At dinner, we were seated next to a couple who are the parents of a friend of the groom. They were visiting from Florida. At some point in the conversation, the husband asked us what we did for a living. It turns out that he is a recently-retired Kaiser ER physician, who knows all of the "old-timers" in my department.

It just goes to show that, as our friend Marlo (the bride) says, "San Diego is just a big small town."

Another Awesome Weekend at the Briccos

My big sis, Dayna, and her friend (and ours!), Kate, came to visit us for the weekend. I was on call and was at the hospital for seven hours on Saturday and an hour yesterday, but I was able to spend the whole day today with the girls. We went to the Zoo all morning. It's so fun to go when it's early, there aren't too many people out, and the animals are out doing things. After that, we went to Coronado for lunch. It was a very nice day.

DeeDee and Shrina will not authorize the use of their photos on this site, so I have to post pictures of MY AWESOME VALENTINO ROSSI HAT!! We know someone who knows someone who knows Valentino Rossi, the best motorcycle racer ever. Somehow, I scored an autographed hat! A hat that Vale actually touched and autographed for me!! I think that I might sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

I will never wash this hat.



Check this out:

A Saturday Night with Mr. Mellow

Rowdy and I saw Jack Johnson in concert tonight. His opening acts were Culver City Dub Collective and Rogue Wave. It was good. Jack didn't sing "our" wedding song, which was sad.


Funnel cakes--a Rowdy favorite.

Date Night

Rowdy and I decided that we needed a date night after what has seemed like a long month of me feeling swamped by life. We went to Taste of Thai in Hillcrest for a nice dinner, then headed south for a double feature at the drive-in.

San Diego is fortunate to have not one, but two drive-in theaters. (I'm counting Santee as San Diego). South Bay Drive-In is way south, south of Chula Vista even, which is close to the border. It's been called "San Diego's biggest entertainment value", and it is. For $7 per person, we watched a double feature from the comfort of our own car, with our own snacks.

When I was a little girl, we went to the drive-in all the time. We would pop a big pot full of popcorn and put it in a grocery sack and bring our own Cokes. Dayna and I would put on our jammies, then Mom, Dad, and us girls would jump into the Red Dragon and head off to the movies. We used to live in the same town as my grandparents, and it was always surprising to me how they just happened to show up at the drive-in about the same time as us. Of course we would beg our parents to let us sit in Grandpa and Grandma's car. Grudgingly, it seemed, Mom and Dad would let us go. It wasn't until I was much older that I caught onto my parents' subtle plan. Very wily, Mom and Dad!

Dear reader, at this point you may be wondering exactly how much of the movie Rowdy and I actually saw. Well, from the very first movie Rowdy and I saw together, he has made it clear that he goes to the movies to watch the movie. No making out at the movies allowed! After three years, he has gotten to the point where it's okay if I snuggle up to him a little, but no funny business! This dictum even extends to the drive-in, and even if the movie isn't so hot.

So, yeah, I actually had to watch the very lame Stepbrothers in its entirety. I did like Pineapple Express, though.

Allergic!

Yesterday, I went to the allergist for the first time. I am the worst about putting off going to the doctor. It's because I'm busy being the doctor for other people.

Anyway, I have become very tired of my nose running all of the time, so I went to the allergist, Dr. Schatz (no lie, that's his name--Dr. Shots). The nurse started me out with the scratch test. She poked my forearms with solutions of various allergens--dust mites, cat dander, dog dander, roach, feathers, molds, pollens. Within seconds, I had a big wheal at the "cat" spot, followed closely by dog, dust mites and pollens. The cat allergy is no suprise to me, but I was surprised at how quickly and strongly I reacted to dog and dust mites. It was very, very uncomfortable, and my upper lip started to tingle and swell. She gave me 60 mg of Allegra, which made me feel a little better.

Then I went into the exam room with Dr. Schatz, and as we chitchatted, my lips began to feel tingly again, my throat was a little bit tight, and my chest was a little tight. That resulted in a very painful shot of epinephrine in my left deltoid. Can I just say that getting epi is very unpleasant? It's very unpleasant. I spent the next 10 minutes or so of the appointment lying on the exam table. To compound this discomfort, I was starving, having gone to my appointment straight from work with no lunch.

I am feeling much better now. I will definitely take Flonase and Claritin as directed from now on.

Seems Reasonable

Not that I'm a Tony Robbins fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the Quote of the Day on gmail was from him:

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

Mmmmm