Holy Hell!

Some explanation, perhaps.

As noted, in between shadowing, studying, and bumming, I've been burning off on side trips to explore the surroundings. Since I'm currently in Southern New Hampshire, this made a trip to Boston somewhat inevitable, since it seemed like something to see.

Unfortunately, since I went to school in California, while we were learning about the Gold Rush, everyone else in the country went to a class that said "Don't ever drive in Boston. Try to avoid driving in Massachusetts altogether. The people there are nearly as insane as the non-layout of the city which seems to have been hacked together by a deranged chimpanzee. If Boston were laid out anywhere near the way it is now during the Revolutionary War, we'd be speaking proper English, drinking good tea, eating bad food, and Paul Revere would, to this day, still be riding around in circles near Commonwealth going "Where the hell is the frigging freeway??? The map shows 14 of them here! I'm NEVER going to get these lights in the windows, and then all the poets will have to write about is a stupid red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens."

I've driven in San Francisco. This city features psychotic MUNI drivers and stop signs at the crest of 45 degree angled hills, double parking, one way streets, and nearly no parking.

I've driven in Tiajuana, where you have to dodge not only the statues arbitrarily placed in the middle of roads, but children selling various things that run at your cars, and the stigma of the California plate on the front and back end of your car that makes you a rolling target.

I've driven in Los Angeles, and love my impatient, SWAT team manuevering gun-toting amigos, and south of Pasadena, I am so in love with their much hated freeway system that I think I would get down on one knee and MARRY it if they'd allow such unions outside of Massachusetts.

I've driven through D.C., Salt Lake City, Atlanta, across the country via different routes twice, through blowing snow, over Donner Summit during a blizzard (a condition which has, in the past, led to cannibalism; I'm just saying), and yet all of this is a Sunday drive back from grandma's in comparison to Boston. Holy shit.

As I mentioned in the Montreal post, a city also notorious for bad driving habits, but which I found perfectly hospitable for lost tourists (save for the horse-drawn carriages in oldtown), when in a large city, I go with the general tradition of driving around sightseeing until I see freeway signs.

Don't. Ever. Do. That. In. Boston. There aren't any freeway signs. The freeways that are supposed to be there, as in, marked on maps, show no ways of accessing them, and roads that are straight on maps dead end into buildings forcing a quick left or right.

You'd think with a maze of schitzophrenic design and a town heavily inundated with tourists, the local drivers, like San Francisco, would have a built in element of patience with people. Not so. So I'm going to make a few suggestions:

First off, I hate it when people drift off at green lights too, but I own a stick shift. If I'm on a hill and you are three inches from my bumper, it's going to take me a leetle more time to get going as I am now ensuring that I don't roll back slightly and hit your tailgating ass. You also do not need to honk at me simply because the light has turned green and my foot is actively pressing down the clutch to take off. The only way you could conceivably honk that fast is if your hand was already on the horn, so kindly bite me.

Since we're on the topic of horns, while horns are certainly a fun novelty item in that they make a funny noise, and in Grenada, are used to say "hi", "screw you", "I'm here", "I know you", "It's clear", "It's not clear", and "you've run over my wife's foot", blaring the horn for no reason (such as the person in front of you being stopped at a red light) tends to inspire those of us with Los Angeles driving habits to reach for our nines. I'm just saying...

When driving, my rear bumper is not a security blanket for your front fender. I'm not sure why my driving 15 over the speed limit in a right hand lane is an invitation for you to ride me so hard I feel like I should be charging a fee, and then without real reason, for you to jerk into the empty other lane like you've had a seizure, but it's unsettling, and tends to elicit a similar reaction to the one above.

While it is exceedingly obnoxious that the roads are open expanses of asphalt without the limitations of lane markings, as I'm traveling, pulling up next to me and then gradually drifting into my passenger door as you contemplate either the Red Sox or man's place in the universe, is not appreciated.

While I appreciate that turn signals are too distracting to use in what must be the exhausting effort of remaining that precise two inches from the next person's bumper, your lack of using them means I am not going to know or act accordingly if you're coming over into my lane, thus ire on your part will not find a sympathetic recipient on mine. Similarly, if I put MY signal on, it is a statement of intent, thus gunning your engine to block me is only going to provide you a test of your brakes (and your horns). I drive a car that comes with a 5 cent redemption and I don't live in this country. Do you feel lucky?

Please examine the rotaries and strongly consider placing suggestions for right of way. The strategy of "Everyone" doesn't seem to be working and appears to cause you folks to even prey on each other from the number of horns blaring, lest you think tourists are the only ones that can't seem to navigate these. For the uninitiated, a rotary is like a roundabout, if a roundabout could speedball.

For your own safety and comfort, since you do like driving in the breakdown lanes, consider consulting (or hiring) city planners to remove the obstacles from the areas in which this behavior is actually legal. It is disturbing to drive in what the city has designated "a temporary" lane only to have a guardrail suddenly appear in the middle of it, which I gather annoys you too from the way you swing abruptly back into traffic (sans signal), nearly taking out whoever might be to the left of you.

So that was my beginning Boston impression. Since I knew parking there was even more elusive than San Francisco's and equally expensive, it was decided to simply head to Cape Cod, which, due to circling Boston for three hours and a trip to Sears to repair a tire (nice potholes, guys), we never made. We did get as far as Plymouth once most things were closed, and I got a picture of the famous rock to prove I survived the trip through Boston and made it someplace famous.

Plymouth Rock is worth seeing because it's funny and even more spectacularly underwhelming than the Hope Diamond. I'd like to see the rest of the actual historical town which did look really cool, but the rock itself is surrounded by lights and faux Greco-Roman columns, which in turn are surrounded by historical markers, and it's... a rock. With "1620" carved on it. It's not really a big or impressive rock, in fact, save date, identical to other ocean rocks. I suppose the Pilgrims came across it and said "Wow! this rock already HAS 1620 carved on it! Well that's a time saver! Quick! Build some columns and get the camera."

Plymouth is also a surprisingly happening town for what I would have thought would be kind of a sleepy tourist town after dark, but instead it seems to suffer a local infestation of teenagers most of whom were white, packed into the local malt shop, and often clad in leather jackets, making me really feel like I'd wandered into a 1950s teen flick. I kept expecting Bobby to invite Mary Sue to the sock hop. Of course, the over 21s, myself included, took to hanging at the local blues joint, which was pretty cool and far less like an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Today? After dragging in at 2 in the morning having survived Massachusetts, it was back to the office to have everyone go "Ohhh. You drove in Boston? Silly girl... tsk tsk", but I got to watch a few procedures and meet some interesting patients since one of the docs seemed to be seeing his full collection of crazies. You know it's bad when you hear him mutter "page me in five minutes" to one of the medical assistants, for reasons that became obvious upon sitting in the session. Whew!

Are we in Canada yet?

As I was saying before, headed through Maine, and I believe at last stop we were in Portland.

The Maine coastline was nice, but I wanted to see inland Maine, since my perceptions of "Water Edge" are forever spoiled by driving up the Pacific Coast Highway a multibillion times and nothing can replace it (awwww). Nice people though, see?



Meaning it was onto Canada!

This required a jaunt through inland Maine, which likes to place arbitrary figures on the toll portions of the turnpike, thus ensuring you can never have exact change.

Inland Maine is gorgeous, but tends to feature sweeping landscapes that make it hard to find a focal point for a picture, particularly near the Vermont border, but for effort:



But then... what's this??



Aiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

Okay, it looked like this:



But hey, my special effects were better than Alien Autopsy's. Take that, Fox! Can you tell yet that I like pictures of buildings? If that's not proof enough for you, we came across this awesome little town that's either in Vermont or New Hampshire, and I don't remember which. Predictably:









Man, New England sure knows how to do churches, eh? Though one of those is a museum.

So at some point, it was time to finally head to Canada. I would have taken a picture of the border but didn't want to get shot by customs, so resigned myself to the subterfuge of grabbing kitch from the souvenier shop on the way back. The road between the border and Montreal was pretty, but fairly empty, though I did love all the stop signs with Arrete written on them because I'm a doofus and stuff like that amuses me.

So, Montreal!!





Hey! WTF? Canada looks like New England!! I could have stayed home... how is anyone even supposed to know I'm *in* Canada?



All right, all right, that's pretty convincing. But how is anyone supposed to know it was *French* Canada?



Hoooookay... and naturally, I'm referring to the fact that some of the fliers are in French and not at all to the fact that the scene looks like an odd addition to a French Canadian circus whose name I can't spell and can't be bothered to look up. The rouge is a nice touch though. Aren't pipers supposed to wear traditional outfits? Moving on.

Fortunately, Montreal (too lazy for the accent) gave me an opportunity to practice a language I'm always trying to increase my aptitude in: Spanish. Yeah, I was surprised too, but I used it to negotiate for a cd of some excellent music being played on the street featuring a piper (different kind than the one above) and a cute little song called "Amigo".

Actually, I loved Montreal, we got there during a huge street fair, which was massively cool, and it's a complete melting pot of a thousand different cultures and styles, and seems to be tri or quadlingual. I was scared when I went there because my knowledge of French is nowhere near passable at anything except asking where the bathroom is, but it turned out to be relatively unnecessary, so I didn't have to play ugly American by making my point the only way people in other countries can understand: by speaking loudly, slowly and if the recipient is an idiot. Mwa ha!

The street fair:



This was the main stage and along that street (which was closed to street traffic), and the entire street was lined with tented merchants, outdoor cafes, music, good smells, good sights. I'd have had more pictures of it, but trying to take pictures, sans tripod, of tons of people partying at night really sucks.

After a nice meal of elk steaks, and the dog getting to walk on that sweet sweet French Canadian pavement, it was time to go... or so I thought.

As I discovered, the same strategy I employ to get out of San Francisco works for Montreal as well. If you are patient and have nowhere you need to be, drive around aimlessly until you see a sign for a freeway. Any freeway. That's right, folks, I navigated around Montreal, finding a street fair and numerous groovy stuff AND got out again all with only a map of the United States that included a few freeway continuations into Canada and a lot of luck.

Of course, that luck turned into a scenic view through Old Montreal which I'd meant to see, but didn't think I'd be able to find. Nothing says awesome like creeping along the narrowest streets I've ever seen, surrounded by things that are pretty, while stuck behind, you guessed it, a horse and buggy while driving, at some points, on cobblestones! It's just like how the Romans used to drive their cheap Korean cars!

I wanted to take a different route back than the one I came in on, and that got a little scary, because if I thought the route in was deserted, it PALED in comparison to the one going back. I cannot understand why a map of the United States, which has limited numbers of roads it can put on there, would mark what is, at times, a two lane highway going through nowhere featuring gas stations that close at 8, tule fog, and no light! And since my gas gauge was a bit low and I had no idea how far it was until I could rectify the situation, that had my knuckles a little white. Darn Canadians...

I crossed back across the border (Oh, and going in, they wouldn't stamp my passport; what up? I thought one of the only benefits of tyrannical and incompetent homeland security was that I got to get stamps for countries I previously could wander in and out of unchecked??) around midnight, which I thought would get me strip searched, but the guy just waved me on. Woo hoo!!! Now I can go back in safely with the 10 million in sweet Canadian diamonds! Er... or a tshirt, some maple sugar candy (I know it's not really uniquely "Canadian"; I just love the stuff), postcards and other things to bore my friends and family with.

Was planning on spending Sunday in the White Mountains, but discovered I'd planned this little shindig when the entirety of Vermont and New Hampshire had graduation... and I had a dog in the car... this translated to no motels. Or hotels. Anywhere. Even ones that didn't take pets. I had a lead at one place where after I said that the dog could sleep in the car since she had ONE room left and allowed no pets; I just needed a place, first insisted that I park where she could SEE the car since I was clearly going to sneak him into her room at first opportunity even though I didn't have to tell her I had a dog in the first place, and then, as someone else came in behind me, gave the room to him and said she "couldn't have a dog on the property", otherwise known as an uber-bitch. I'm hoping, that as a favor by the universe, an entire pack of dogs muscles their way into her home and soaks her mattress in urine, but I'm not vindictive or anything about having to drive until 6 in the morning because there were no other places for any price. Not at all. So I went home. No white mountains for me!!! But I recovered Sunday and did surgery Monday, which was awesome! So you'll hear about that later.

Bonjour!

And a happy belated Father's Day to all you dads out there!!!!!

So, as noted I went to Maine this weekend... until deciding what the hell and going to Montreal, which I'd spell with the accent, but I'm lazy. Road trip!

Maine's seacoast was largely lovely but stinky. I am always partial to California's Highway 1... REALLY partial, but Maine's Highway 1 was plenty nice, though I don't think I went up far enough to get the major scenic stuff for which it is so famous. The beaches were lovely but tended to carry with them various smells ranging from industrial sulfur run off to red tide.

Like New Hampshire though, Maine had plenty going on in the pretty old buildings department:



What I don't understand is why it appears to have a slit to accommodate a longbow. Particularly since the church was built in the early 1900s... my guess is that they foresaw the flapper era and gathered to spit all the short skirted, short-haired tasseled, future Laurence Welk show watching crowd on the ends of arrows. But that's just a guess.

Eventually though, I found Portland, which for some reason, reminded me a bit of a cross between San Francisco and Monterey, though not nearly as big. More importantly, it had the goal: LOBSTER!



A pier stretched out to the left, providing a nice view. The back deck, where I
picked up my freshly boiled Maine lobster and lobster bisque, provided this one:



And "yum" by the way, making up for the cruel lobster (and Ting) absence in the final days of my first term.

But, lest I actually *tell* you about the rest and Montreal, it's bedtime so you'll have to come back tomorrow!

Lobster and surgery...

Those are two nouns that shouldn't be together, eh?

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Maine with the arbitrary goal of getting a lobster dinner, but with the general goal of sightseeing and possibly skirting up to Canada if the urge strikes me. I'm an on-the-road kind of gal and like to set meaningless destinations in the countryside because it gives me a chance to get out and drive, which is particularly fun in my tiny little manual shift Hyundai Accent. Of course, if I hit anything, you'll never hear from me again, because the safety rating is even lower than the grade I got in third quarter organic chemistry.

To give you some idea of the arbitrary destination thing, I once drove from North Carolina to Northern Georgia for a cup of coffee, North Carolina to South Carolina to look at the giant roadside butt (some know it as a peach, but those who've seen it know what I'm talking about), etc ad infinitim. Try it sometime. I also love little side trips and roadside attractions, which is how I once ended up in Solvang, CA, a town I had not ever known was there.

So Maine should be fun for a couple of days. Probably for longer than that, but I don't *have* longer than that because I'm reporting at 6:30 am for surgery on Monday.

In other words, the shadowing is going fantastically! Initially, I was going to watch two knee replacements and an ankle arthroscopy, but the latter got moved so now it's the two knee replacements, but AWESOME.

I don't think they'll let me scrub in, at least not for this one, and I'm not sure this hospital's policy on it, but I know that at least for the first surgery, the doc will put me in the corner in case I pass out, which considering hospital experiences and more critically, forensic experiences, I find unlikely, but hey, to a surgeon, when the alternative is having someone you've known for two weeks collapse un-sterile headfirst into your patient, is an understandable precaution.

In general, the shadowing is fun just in and of itself, with the surgery as gravy. I'm learning a *lot*, and I'm getting to work in a private practice, which I've never done before. Some pretty awesome x-rays too, though not as spectacular as the new trauma patients, of course.

So in case you hadn't noticed, this is somewhat filler material, but I should have pictures and stories of Maine, more on SGU, and non-HIPAA violating surgery details upon my return, preferably not blogged at 2 in the morning.

Ahhhh... wireless

But not at temp home. Tsk.

I'm sitting at a Borders in the not-so-small town of Nashua, stocking up on reading material, downloaded episodes of Scrubs (but not the season finale of House yet, alas, not posted), and fast-loading webpages. Yes, that's right; high speed internet is more addictive than heroin, and removal from it causes seizures, headaches, crying jags, and a shuddering return to the written word.

I'm thoroughly enjoying New England though, largely because I've never spent a significant amount of time here, and it's pretty and about as far removed as you can get from the Caribbean without being in Siberia. Not that I don't like Grenada; don't get me wrong, but after the traumas of finals week and a long time on the island, you long for a pine tree. You'll see what I mean.

So far, my impression is that a great deal of the local New England (mainly, southern New Hampshire, northern Mass, and eastern Vermont) looks like a giant historical preservation site like Old Salem, Old Sacramento and other historical places with the initials "O.S.", but that doesn't end really until you get into outer Nashua, though sure enough, when you get into inner Nashua, we go right back to brick buildings, Bank of Americas in what appears to be an old farmhouse, and so forth.

I've been doing mini car trips to explore, and am hoping to get up to Maine to drive along the coastline and eat real Atlantic lobster to see how it holds up against the bugs bagged in SoCal of the spiny variety. It's hard to imagine anything tasting better than that.

Here's some New England:

















These are buildings I specifically liked, but for the most part, this whole area either looks like the above, or looks like heavy red riding hood type woods. Quite nice if not for the lack of high speed internet and cell phone reception, both of which, as mentioned, I can get in a developing nation in the middle of nowhere.

And here's one of the neighbors. He and his girlfriend visit the back porch around 7 every night (whoops, we're late!), occasionally tapping on the glass insistently to remind me that they'd like to be fed. I've gotten them both eating out of my hand, and in the female's case, eating my toe upon apparently thinking it was edible: