Morning Glory?

Neighbor is playing house music starting at 2:30 am. I try to go back to sleep to no avail. Oh, well. I'm walking over to the pharmacy later today and investing in those Hearos earplugs.

I've discovered that there is no hot water before 5am in this building. So I sit here in my bed clothes trying to find something useful to do, other than dissertation writing - there are those things that you just shouldn't be doing at 4 o'clock in the morning, and I think they would include drinking, hard drugs (er, not that I endorse illicit drug use at any time during the day, kids), listening to speed metal or BOOMING TECHNO MUSIC, or working on one's dissertation. It's not that I can't, it's more that it's a bad idea. Writing takes a certain amount of focus and momentum, and I don't want to interrupt either if I feel like I have to get up to shower and scrounge breakfast.

I thought I'd write a haiku about having no hot water, but for some reason, poetry about one's early morning routine just didn't have that zing to it that I'd normally like to find in verse.

I look outside the window just in time to see a little bit of purple emerging on the sunrise and rush to find my camera. I've not had much time to play around with it, so I'm definitely still self-conscious about the amateurishness of the pictures. But here's the purple - which disappeared from the horizon about 20 seconds later.

I think I'll give the water heater another twenty minutes to fulfill its duties. In the meantime, I take care of non-dissertation business - filling out my surgery clerkship preferences. They've decided to restructure the program, so now the clerkship will now be made up of three rotations: one long "core" rotation in general surgery, which will be about half the length of the clerkship (about 5½ weeks), plus two shorter rotations, each about 2½ weeks long. I don't have much to go on, as far as ranking my preferences, other than this Word file which compiles some notes about various locations. Here are my core rotation choices (my comments in blue):

• Boston Medical Center (BMC, right on campus): GI Surgery (ick - GI????)
• BMC: Surgical Oncology (could be interesting - can't wait to do Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "It's nawt a tumour!")
• BMC: Trauma & General Surgery (I think seeing trauma for almost six weeks could get old)
• VA Boston: General & Vascular Surgery (I've heard good things about the VA, but horrible things about vascular surgery. Like it's really long and boring.)
• Cape Cod Hospital: Not sure I want to live away from home during the rotation, but I hear it's nice at the hospital. And Cape Cod during the summer would be nice.
• Quincy Hospital: Lots of private practitioners. A view from outside academia would be nice.

Okay, next question: Do you have a car and can you drive another student? Well, the real answer would be 'yes' and 'yes.' The practical question is another matter - having to get to the hospital at 4:30 am will be a challenge in itself - do I want to sacrifice that 15 minutes of sleep to go fetch my fellow classmate? I mark down 'yes' to both, thinking that it will probably a good thing, anyway. Having the responsbility of getting someone else into the hospital on time will be a positive pressure.

Third question: Ranking the general surgery options. I really don't know what I want here. The choices:

• vascular (=booooooring)
  
• trauma (=gross)
  
• anesthesiology (=watching anesthesiologist read the Wall Street Journal)
  
• Roger Williams Hospital (surgical oncology/reconstructive surgery focus) (= 2½ weeks in Providence, Rhode Island)

I go against instinct and opt for the rotation in Providence. I think reconstructive surgery sounds like the most interesting experience here. I rank trauma last.

Fourth question: Ranking the surgical subspecialties. Rank the following #1 through #8. Grr. Fairly sparse information:

• cardiothoracic surgery
  
• neurosurgery
• ophthalmology
• orthopaedic surgery (aka "bridge painting")
  
• otolaryngology
• pediatric surgery (I hear the pediatric surgeons are an extremely nasty breed of surgeon)
  
• plastic & reconstructive surgery
• urology (I hear the urologists are an unusually laid-back breed of surgeon)

I choose the top 3 with some thought (urology, plastics, orthopaedics) then rank the rest a bit randomly. Done.

Ooh. I think there's hot water now.

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Right now I'm listening to: Kin, Sounds from the Ground

More trip-hop downtempo stuff.