It would take less time to treat TB than present it

Hi again, I'd have updated before, but uh... well, IM is IM. About 20 minutes of patient contact to 5 hours of lecture, so it doesn't make for interesting reading. "Saw a guy I can't tell you too much about because of confidentiality. Fell asleep during morning report. Rounded and learned about biased studies. Fell asleep during noon conference. Learned about DKA. Went home. Did USMLE World questions. Engaged in either the activities of A: "Going out" or B: "Staying home, drinking a glass of wine, and watching the Big Bang Theory/True Blood."

Rinse, repeat.

But now, I've spent the better part of two days doing exactly what I did in college when I needed to write a paper, which is consult entirely too many references, read them, know the first halves so well that I could reproduce them from memory into machine language, and extensively work up the first part of the presentation/paper before getting bored with the topic, stay up too late, and ram all the conclusions together, which is where the punchline of the study usually is. Thank goodness for abstracts and Mountain Dew.

Pretty much, I want this presentation to go well so I can both avoid boring the living crap out of my colleagues (a tall order after an entire day of lecture) and more to the point, avoid continuing to present the impression that I am completely useless to our chief attending. Thing is, since he makes me nervous, I don't tend to screw up in front of anyone else, but the second I get within shot of this guy, my (on vibrate!) cell phone starts pumping out the MP3 player at full volume with no discernible motivation, I lock myself in or out of conference rooms, and drop things. Oh, do I drop things... papers, pens, stuff out of my pockets while picking up papers and pens, books; I'm just glad I haven't been around him while trying to transport a patient or there'd be someone with a fresh orthopedic consult thanks to me.

Not like I can say I'm having too rough a go of it. I'm still enjoying my life; I'm still enjoying this big wonderful city, and I am absolutely giddy over the notion that it's *actually getting cold*. Maybe I'll regret this come February, but four months of unrelenting un-airconditioned-above kitchen mugginess was enough and I am basking in the fact that last night I got to sleep under that Ikea comforter I bought back in May, rather than relying on ice packs and fans.

What else... the loan checks came in just in time for everyone, though I made the mistake of hauling ass to a nice Wachovia branch (couldn't find one in Brooklyn) while looking scruffy. So naturally this prompted a full jeans-t-shirt take and an evaluation of my check. For reference, this check looks like it was issued by the federal government. It's got freaking heat and fingerprint sensors on it.

"Have you deposited these checks before?"
"No, they were being sent to my father and he deposited them."
"Oh."
"There's no Wachovia branch in Grenada."
"Hmmm..."
"Is there a problem?"
"Well, does this check look different to you than before?"
"Ummm... I didn't see the previous ones, so no."
"Because they look completely different."
"It should be from St. George's University."
"No, it's from University Services LLC." (Oh, my frigging bad)
"Okay."
"When was the last check deposited?"
"One in May; one in December or November or something."
(Pause... she prints something out)
"You see? This is the one from May. It looks completely different."
"I don't know what to tell you. You can call them."

So she takes my driver's license, has a fairly hushed conversation on the phone to which I got hints of "No, she only wants to deposit it". At this point, I'm vaguely wondering if I'm going to have to explain myself to the police for daring to try to deposit a check of greater value than someone of my general appearance would get from a "Check into Cash" place.

All that and she got authorization, but then kindly but firmly tells me she's placing a hold on it until October 6th, which is one day after my rent's due, but whatever. I figure it's just the standard, but apparently the holds are determined by the branch, which meant after determining that I was not the world's most brilliantly stupid villain (I can create perfect heat sensor checks, but then choose to defraud banks by depositing them with no cash back to my verifiable bank account), she still thought I was so suspicious that we needed over a week to make sure I wasn't pretending to be an airline pilot from Pan-Am or something. So I'm gonna throw away those jeans, I think.

Uh oh; what's this? It's lecture time!