18 weeks pregnant!

The baby is the size of a sweet potato. My father has a list that compares the size of my baby to different foods. It's very cute when he calls to say "the baby is an onion this week!"

We have our ultrasound in two weeks to find out the sex. Very exciting! I hope it's a girl. Not sure why. Probably because my sister and I had so much fun growing up together as best friends.

Below are some pictures of my four month belly!

Pictures from out turkey (pie) day!

Day after Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday this year. I had to work on Wednesday and Thursday night leaving the actual day of Thanksgiving for sleep. I woke up at 4pm and said good-bye to Mark. Friday was our Thanksgiving. We went to the grocery store and looked at the turkey section. It looked promising. Lots of turkeys left. So we turned to the instructions. Thaw out two days in advance! What!? Or 1/2 hour for every pound in cold water. Ok...this turkey was 11 pounds. Hmmm...5 hours of thawing with a 3 hour cooking time. Plus the need for a meat thermometer! Maybe cooking a turkey needs a little advanced preparation. So I went to my reliable Rachel Ray 30 minute meals website. Turkey shepherd's pie! Perfect! That along with real mashed potatoes, canned turkey gravy and Stovetop stuffing made the perfect holiday meal. Oh yes...and for dessert, Boston Cream Pie. Mark's favorite!

Night Float

I've had the opportunity to experience night float 7 times now. 8 months total to go. Night float is like working out at the gym to me. It takes major motivation to get there but after you are done with it you realize the benefits that you may reap from it.
Benefit #1: opportunity to operate. I'm on night float right now with a chief who does not like to operate. Go figure, right? So this gives me the chance to operate at least once every night. Benefit #2: not having to round. Rounding in the morning is painful. Trying to cram seeing 20-30 patients in 1 hour and 15 minutes while writing a quick note with everything that happened overnight as well as their entire plan. On night float you only have to round on Sunday mornings and on any holidays that need to be covered.
Benefit #3: it can be fun. If you are on with a good team you can build some good friendships and have lots of laughs. Last night float I was on with Mary, Moxie and Mia. We had a couple of theme nights. One was "junk food night." Everyone brought a certain junk food. Moxie made a junk food sandwich consisting of a Swiss chocolate roll with squirt cheese and a twizzler on top. Nasty!
Benefit #4: lose weight (besides junk food night.) On night float you usually lose your appetite because you are so sleep deprived. Your eating schedule gets all messed up. You don't feel hungry in the morning because you just worked 13 hours and you want to sleep. I have a quick bowl of cereal when I wake up around 3pm. I usually get hungry again around 12am but the options in the caf at that hour are not appealing.
Benefit #5: not having to take q4 call. Most other programs have a call schedule where you are on every fourth night for call. At least with night float your body gets semi-adjusted to sleeping during the day.
So I guess I'll continue to look on the bright side for the remaining 8 months that are left of night float. The best is that my chief year (a.k.a. my 5th year) I will only cover weekend call. No nights during the week for one whole year!

Politics

For fall vacation this year Mark and I drove to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the car ride there we listened to talk radio. Of course with the presidential election coming up next year politics was a hot topic. Mark and I began to talk about the different candidates and I was so embarrassed when I couldn't think of the Vice President's name! I also realized that I didn't know anything about the current candidates for the next election. I felt totally uneducated and was ashamed that somewhere during my residency I had stopped caring about anything going on around me. I have never had a real sense of civic duty but this was a little extreme.
So Mark and I have decided to learn more about the candidates and about politics in general. For me this is mostly so that I don't look totally idiotic at social dinners and when talking to my father-in-law. I didn't really know where to start so I googled 2008 presidential election. Most of the information I got was off of Wikepedia. I learned that "incumbent" means someone running who is already in office. I also learned that I may not want to vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman.
The next chapter in my political education involved local politics. In the weekly Portland paper "The Phoenix" there was an article on the local candidates for city council and other offices. I knew this was a biased way to educate myself but being a young person reading a young person's newspaper I figured their opinions probably would be similar to my own. So on Nov 6th I hit the polls and basically voted for everyone they recommended. I also voted no on the question about starting a new casino in Maine. I voted yes to more money for the schools and land conservation. Mark said that my paycheck this week will be a little smaller because of the way I voted. I said, I guess that makes me a Democrat.
My political education is just starting and I am looking forward to learning more. All I can say so far is that it felt good to step behind the voting curtain and actually participate in the world going on around me.