PU!

Hmmm, how do you spell. "PU!" Maybe periods would help, but then where would the exclamation point go? Either way, if you could hear me, I am saying something that sounds like (pee-you). Because my room is stinky!

Oh, ha ha! You're hilarious. Ok, fine, I left that door wide open. But in all seriousness, it's not me, it's my closet. When I first moved in, there was a yellow-ish watermark that I really didn't pay too much mind to after determining over the course of the first week that it wasn't spreading. But after crazy rain two weeks ago, the yellow is now green and I smell...MOLD!!!

Now, I have a very sensitive nose for bad smells. Last night, for example, I had to move to the other side of Joe b/c the guys who sat next to me had fleeces that stank of stale beer and cigarettes (at the last second! And there weren't any other convenient seats, curses! I mean for me. They could have sat in the front row for all I cared, stinky late guys!). And now my room smells. I'm glad I'm moving because mold can be toxic (!), although I don't think this kind is. But I have to tell my roomie. Super stat. As soon as she gets back from her (extended) family holiday trip to Minnesota.

As for moving, it is coming along s-l-o-w-l-y. Stupid escrow and their dawdling ways in mid-December, followed by, "Oops, it's the holidays. Later!" Cross your fingers for Wednesday!

Cooking up a storm!

Tomorrow is Christmas. And for Joe and I, that means Mass, SeaWorld, and Christmas dinner at the Wises'. I've been cooking for the last few hours for three (3!) measly dishes. But they taste amazing.

"Oh, Tierney," you exclaim, "your trademark modesty is once again revealed!" And I will blush, toe imaginary dirt on the ground, and say, "Oh, it wasn't that big a deal."

It wasn't. But I made creamed spinach, curry spiced cauliflower and a cake with such an elaborate, every-ingredient-in-the-title that I shall give it to you: Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate-Peanut Butter Glaze. It is also the dessert with the most hyphens in its name.

The creamed spinach is amazing. I helped Mom make the dish over Thanksgiving and I ended up in love. I've always liked creamed spinach in restaurants, but I LOVED this dish. A secret? Serve it piping!hot! It also does very well with a hint o' the following: lemon, nutmeg, parm, salt and pepper. The only disheartening thing about creamed spinach is that you spend so much time cleaning and destemming a mountain of spinach leaves that the end result after the "wilting" step is sorely disappointing. I had to buy more spinach from the local mart because my original amount shrunk to such pitiful dimensions.

Next is the curry spiced cauliflower. I have never been a cauliflower fan. It is the pale, weirdly crunchy cousin of broccoli, which doesn't fare all that well itself in salad bars of yore. BUT, caramelized cauliflower after 50 minutes in the oven with the addition of softened onions mixed with curry powder and mustard seed makes for quite a treat! I've made the dish twice before and it's always a hit. I still don't get it because even though I gobble down my fair share of it, I still think cauliflower is intrinsically too weird of a vegetable to be a hit.

Finally, the cake. It's a triple layer chocolate cake with peanut butter-cream cheese frosting. I've had a few crumbs that stuck to the pan and a lick of the frosting (no double dipping though!) and it is pretty awesome. I will let you know the verdict tomorrow, but already, I think this is going to be a repeat recipe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! Especially to the East Coast fam party, representing 2/3 of this fine family. Joe and I are thinking of you. Especially when we see Shamu.

I KID!!!

Christmas is coming!

The goose is getting fat, fa-la-la-la-la, Deck the Halls! Merry Christmas!

So my brother is coming tomorrow for a week, including Christmas. I'm worried he'll think I'm the biggest, non-festive loser ever. I mean, really, I'm even on call Wed-Fri! Boring! And loser-ish!

And I have no food in the house. My diet is oatmeal, Kashi bars, cereal, cottage cheese and applesauce. Lately, it's included ground turkey with beans after I evaporated all the water in my "chili" that I've been eating for the last three days. Oh, I sometimes have eggs! But it's kind of amazing how little one person eats. I still have an eye for ingredients for 6-people scale cooking.

But I'm trying to think of fun things to do. So far, we're going to a Christmas dinner at Sean's house, with a few other work-related people. I'm going to make a veggie dish (maybe two?) and a dessert. We're going to ham or beef, Court's still making up the menu.

And we'll go to Christmas mass, the logistics of which I always dislike because of getting there early to a crowded, stuffy Church and then someone who came late makes me feel guilty the whole time because it's either a squirmy little kid or (more likely) a little ol' lady. Full of the Christmas Spirit, I am. Still, I usually do give up my seat so being early is all for naught. But the Mass is always nice- I'm a sucker for that Nativity story, I am. And singing "Joy to the World" at the end is always so awesome. It's one of the few songs that Catholics actually sing rather rousingly, rather than mumbliciously.

On the phone with my sister...

* blah, blah, blah--
Me: Oh B, can you hold on a minute?

B: Sure.

Me: Puts the phone down in my lap Yeah, thanks for crossing on a green, you big a-hole.

Hapless pedestrian gives the most non-apologetic "Sorry" wave ever. Loser

Me: Ok, I'm back.

B: Did you just call someone an a-hole?

Me: Yes. But the windows were up.

B: You interupted the conversation to call someone an a-hole with your windows were up?

Me: Well, yeah. I'm not supposed to be driving with my phone so I put it down before I said anything. Maybe he can read lips.

Cover!

Throughout the course of the day, I am lucky enough to be on the receiving end of multiple coughs, sprays, and gleaks (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gleak). This is the understandable consequence of not only looking into multiple oral cavities a day, but also sticking little wooden sticks inside as well as the occasional needle. It is, quite frankly, disgusting.

BUT! I accept it. Oh yes, the embodiment of the serenity prayer, that's me. But one thing that I have noticed lately is that my chief resident, who is frequently sick with some sort of URI, has been coughing without covering his mouth! Gross! Especially when walking behind him (read: downwind).

Monday, I told him he was doing that, which he promptly denied and told me to tell him the next time he did it. So 10 minutes later, there it was. Various excuses have been crafted over the last 48 hours to include:

* You know, sometimes I get that throat tickle and I just can't move my hands fast enough.

* I did not!

* Ok, that was once.

And my favorite...

*But I just sterilized my hands.

Freezing!

I am so cold. Like, hoodie-wearing, why-is-the-AC-on cold. I am shivering outside, I double up on layers when I'm overnight at the hospital (Aside: WHY are there 8 inpatients on the ENT service?!?! That is CRAZY talk!).

It is, BTW, 58 degrees in San Diego. With no wind chill. I am such a West Coast weenie now.

Time to study anatomy. Oh, middle and inner ear, why are you so small and complicated?

Escrow!

I'm in escrow, a state of being that I didn't even knew existed until about 2 weeks ago! A little background? Let me explain...

So, even though I'm in a sweet roomie situation right now, I decided that since I'm going to be in SD for awhile and I still get a free move from the government (read: all my stuff is still in storage), I decided that I wanted to get my own little space that I could move my stuff into and stay awhile. And experience the joys of homeownership, I guess.

I looked on Craigslist and found a really cute cottage-like condo about a mile from where I currently live and three miles from work. These units were totally redone in 2007 and I thought one was particularly awesome so...I went for it!

Yesterday was the house inspection by Mac the Inspextor. Just kidding about the X, he spelled it correctly. He was pretty impressed with the work that went into the house. The completely redone wiring is an especially nice touch since most conversions don't have new electric since it's rather expensive. After the inspection, Mike and I went over even more documents regarding contingencies, etc. Mike is my realtor. If you're ever in SD, I definitely recommend him.

Also, another nice thing is that I feel karmically harmonic since I'm getting place that isn't empty due to someone else's misfortune. Well, actually, the investors apparently lost their shirts in the whole complex deal but I don't feel too badly for them unlike a little cute family, for example.

Other events from the weekend:
* Call: My white-cloud incident-free call weekends were definitely a thing of the past this weekend. Two cases added for Monday and two admissions. I'm glad I don't have any gen surg friends who read this as they would be crying so many buckets of tears for me, they'd turn into little raisins.

* Office Christmas Party: It was fun. We had it at our department head's house, which was beautiful and well-decorated. It was a lot of fun. I love parties with lots of mingling although sometimes I feel I leave some conversations more gracefully than others. Like if I see something bright and shiny? Forget it, I'm done.

East Coast Holiday!

So, I'm not even sure if anyone reads the blog anymore since my own Dad asked, "Is your blog still on the web anymore?" It ended up he was typing in the wrong address and getting some trade journal. But still, further proof that my life was way cooler to write about when I was in Japan.

But I still get to take vacations so maybe once every 3 months, I will seem cool. And also! The second week in January will be San Diego restaurant week so I will (hopefully) have lots of updates then although I don't exactly see myself taking the foodie blogger route. Unless I get a sweet site design. And start eating more interesting food. Although I love to cook and I like many different types of food, it's hard to find a dish I love so much I can eat it for several days straight. For example, my pumpkin/black bean soup was delicious but a little too black-beany after 5 days of it for lunch. If that makes sense.

So, I just got back from an awesome Thanksgiving holiday. I went up to Newport and walked part of the Cliff Walk, including the 40 Steps. I also checked out a little bit more of the town, which was cute since I love New England villages. I even saw the Naval Academy (1861-1864), Newport-style when the Middies were shipped up to RI to protect them from the Confederates.

After a too-short visit in RI, I headed down to NJ to spend Thanksgiving with my family + Brady's nice boyfriend. Thanksgiving dinner was AWESOME, despite my best efforts to over-citrify the creamed spinach with ~4x the amount of lemon juice required. And my Thanksgiving sandwich two days later was amazing. Why did I wait two days, you ask? Because on Friday, we went into the city for an awesome Broadway show/dinner combo. We saw Boeing, Boeing, a love quadrangle comedy featuring a 1960s suave man trying to juggle 3 fiances that are all flight attendants flying in and out of Paris. Guess what doesn't work out too well over the course of the play?

Then we went to the Rainbow Room for dinner, which was amazing. The view is incredible and the visibility that night was perfect. It's funny, I thought New York was taller than it is. We were on the 64th floor and over most of the buildings, although the density of the buildings is unbelievable. Don't get me wrong, they are still towering and huge at street level. I think I still had my child's view of NYC as having buildings that, literally, scraped the sky. I've only been to New York a handful of times so I guess that's why I've kept my younger self's perception for so long.

I came back Sunday night and now I'm back at work. I'm so excited for the holiday season. Joe is visiting later in the month so I'll still have family around on Christmas. Maybe he can help me adjust to California weather + Christmas!