It's a new week and the last week of vacation. The list of fun house-stuff includes repainting the shutters, putting in gardening siding, and painting the sunroom. We also need to get the cars washed, oil changed, and perhaps buy Kayla a new battery.

Owning a kick-ass television is very cool and also very annoying. I have a sweet Samsung DLP monitor, but the component 2 output stopped working on me. So now comes the part of trying to fix it. I've called Samsung twice, Best Buy twice, and even two local repair places twice...all to no avail. So now I've been on hold for ten minutes with Samsung to get this resolved once and for all. The problem is someone will physically need to come out here, because the unit is so VERY VERY BIG! I just hung up with Alicia who has now hooked me up, and I'll be receiving a call from New England Television Repair in the next ninety minutes. Funny, they were one of the local places I called twenty minutes ago who wouldn't talk to me, because they didn't have my information on file. I hope I get to talk with the smug sonofabitch who shrugged me off. Sweet.

I just want to remark that Kayla is currenty teaching me how to say W-I-N-E, or Wayne as some people say. I said Waaaaaay-ne, which apparently isn't enough. It's actually W-eyeeeee-ne. That's for our buddy Ashley who is dating a fellow named Wayne and why we just had a discussion on how to say W-eye-ne.

Hi. Vacation-life is the coolest thing ever. I'm sitting here with the dooogs while gazing at another beautiful New England morning. Kayla is in the kitchen making biscuits. It's 70 degrees right now (in the middle of August), and it was 59 last night. We slept with the windows open last night. WE SLEPT WITH THE WINDOWS OPEN IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST.

Monday

I officially started vacation on Monday afternoon. I slept most of the day after being post-call. I got up and watched Phil win his second major championship (I taped it on my trusty DVR). It's very gratifying to see Phil winning majors. I hope there are several more to come. Then Kayla and I headed off to run errands. We first dropped by Comcast to turn in a $20 coupon and change my service. Luckily I realized I was paying extra for Turner Classic Movies and Oxygen, so I changed that to the SPORTS PACKAGE. And it was $2/month cheaper. Sweet.

Then we headed to a local retailer (name concealed to protect the nice saleslady who helped me out) to purchase our new bedding. It's the Rigger Collection by Nautica in Olive and Navy blue. I'm quite impressed with the colors. However, we forgot all of our coupons and had to leave. The nice thing though, is that the super sweet saleslady Yanira (pronounced Janira, as leading Y's are pronounced J in Spanish) said to come back on Tuesday and she'd take our 20% off coupons even though they specifically exclude Nautica.

So we left and headed to Pizzeria Uno's for a nice Chicago style pizza. They were having an outdoor concert with two dudes playing covers with their acoustic guitars, so we sat outside and listened to them while enjoying excellent pizza and New England clam chowder. The temperature was perfect, and the music was very pleasant. Even the dude's little daughter sang a song and got the biggest ovation of the evening. Then we went home and went to bed.

Tuesday

We woke up early and decided to have buttermilk blueberry pancakes and bacon. I had very good intentions on this whole deal, but it didn't turn out quite as expected. I made one big pancake (as big as the pan...hence the name "big pan-cake") instead of little ones, which was a recipe for disaster. I couldn't flip the thing and it ended up a big mound of shit. However, it still tasted good. I have included a diagram for your edification.



Then I spent most of the afternoon cleaning the pool and grill along with building our bed--finally. The pool was a mess, because the motor had crapped out on us a few days earlier. We thought it was a fuse, but the fuse box was untripped. Then I realized the motor might be on a different fuse (which it was) and reset the thing. The motor wasn't crapped out after all, so I ran it and cleaned the pool. The grill looks good, but the automatic igniter is already out. I'll need to call Home Depot about that. Then we headed to the local retailer to pick up our bedding.

We really got a sweet deal on the bedding...basically 20% off everything. SWEET! We got a bunch of other stuff as well for the house, and mom said she's send us a down-filled comforter which saved us even more. The two salesladies who helped us out were very nice and certainly hooked us up. We will frequent said retailer again, and will forever have our repeat business.

We got back on the highway and headed to the city of Hadley which is just south of Amherst (home of U Mass) and east of Northampton (home of Smith College). However, I took the wrong exit (2 miles from the correct one) and ended up taking a 30-minute detour. It was actually quite beautiful and allowed us to see much of Western Massachusetts it seems. Thank heavens gas is so cheap ($2.50/gallon), or I might be upset. Anyway, we finally arrived in Hadley to visit WHOLE FOODS MARKET! Yep, Austin, Texas has followed us up here to New England and built us a Whole Foods. It was awesome, just like home. We bought scallops, organic/local vegetables, fillets, wine, bread, and tons of other stuff. It was like being in heaven. I can't wait to go back, as it reminds me of walking the isles of Central Market (or even Whole Foods) in Texas. Just a nice bit of home here in Mass. We then left and stopped at a roadside stand to purchase corn. I'll tell you about that next.

Then we went home and put our new bedspread on along with the sheets and dustruffels and such. It looks very nice if I don't say so myself. Then it was time for dinner which included our filets, corn, and a salad. The corn is incredible. It is on par with Fincel's corn of Dubuque, Iowa which is so good, my parents would have it shipped to Dallas every summer. We think the reason it's so good is because the farm is irrigated directly by the Mississippi River. Well, perhaps the Connecticut River is nice too, as I'm sure this corn is irrigated directly. So we roasted the corn in the shuck, had salad, and seared the filets on the new grill. It was awesome. I recommend the Montinore Estate 2002 Pinot Noir from Oregon. That was one of the finer Pinots I've had in quite a while.

Wednesday

Today the new Kenmore range was delivered. It's a sweet stainless steel and black gas range with four burners that actually work. So now the kitchen is almost complete with our stainless steel motif. All that remains is the microwave/venthood which arrives on Friday. The rest of the kitchen looks really good. The range, refrigerator, and dishwasher look very nice. Once the walls get painted (Nantucket Mist) and the $100 butcher block gets delivered we'll be ready to go. We had a New York Strip with a wine/mustard sauce for dinner. It was good, but I overcooked the strip. I think I'll stick to tenderloin, which was incredible.

Thursday

Today the new patio furniture was delivered. We quickly put it together and it fits perfectly on our little patio area on the side of the backyard. Now we just need to move all the old boxes and clean up the area. Kayla reminded me that Dr. O. has a pressure washer that I definitely will look into borrowing. We planted two trees on the front-side yard. We have a Japanese Maple and also a pink-flowering crab apple. Planting trees is fun, but it's not exactly easy. I'm transplanting all the grass I dig up for the trees and moving it into the backyard where the crab grass has taken over. However, it seems I can't put crabgrass killer down until the spring, so for now we'll put seed and turfbuilder down and hopefully whip this yard into shape after winter comes and goes. Dinner included salmon grilled on cedar planks along with more corn of course. The salmon was actually quite good, especially the aroma of the cedar plank (which I can smell as I type this).

I'm on call at the moment here at the hospital. It's been a good day so far. I've been busy all day with interesting stuff, and a few of my patients have some issues. One of them who had a ruptured appendix had a heartbeat of 80 then jumped to 180. Not good. So we had to do the full work-up, give medications quickly, order a bunch of tests and all sorts of stuff. It looks like she is septic, which means she has a bacterial infection which is affecting her blood pressure and heart rate. I started her on antibiotics (among other things like amiodarone, cardizem drip, blood gas to rule out pulmonary embolism, more blood cultures, ECGs, CBC, lactate, and a bunch of other stuff). I'm going to try and take a nap, which will be short of course, as I can tell it will be a long night. Then I'm going to watch Phil win the PGA Championship tomorrow morning. Then my vacation starts. Sweet!

The stupid bastard who Nathan paid for his webspace stole everyone's money and left the country. So my website along with Nathan's and all the people Nathan shares his space with are down. In fact, you can't even read this at the time of publication. How sweet is that? I also don't have e-mail right now, so please resend me any attempted messages from 8/8-8/14 as I cannot receive mail from tommy AT tommyroshek.com.

Kayla and I had a wonderful day today. It's tax free weekend here in Massachusetts, so we decided to finish out our purchases for the house. We arrived at Home Depot around 7:45 this morning to make our purchases along with Brian O. with whom we split a sweet GMC Home Depot truck. Brian purchased a fence for his backyard, while I purchased a sweet 45,000 BTU Charbroil grill (with side burner) and 9X12 foot piece of carpet for our mud room. The current carpet is old and smelly, so this will really liven up the room once we install it. Actually, I'll be doing that with Kayla's dad a week from today. Already Kayla's sister and mom along with my mom have been up here to help us move in. They've been incredibly helpful and nice, and we'd be WAY BEHIND if they didn't help us out. The house is looking beautiful. We have almost finished the landscaping in the front and back. The front has all new flowers, trees, and mulch. We even purchased a Japanese Red Maple, a Plum tree (also the name of a street nearby), a Pee Gee Hydrangea, a pink-flowering Crabapple, a Royal Paulownia (which has lavender-blue flowers every spring and grows forty feet tall), and finally a 3 in 1 Rose of Sharon bush (which blooms purple, pink, and white flowers). Plus we have Azaleas, Stargazer Lilies, Miniature Rose Bushes, Royal Burgundy Barberry, Trumpet Vines, Assorted Day Lilies, Lavender Mums, Kalancoe, mixed Lupines, and a bunch of other stuff. We even put down some fertilizer and bug spray. Once the seed is down in a few weeks and the trees in the ground, we ought to be done with the yard for a bit. Anyway, so we loaded up the stuff in the sweet Home Depot truck and dropped it all off. Then we headed to Sears and purchased a gas range, overhead microwave with vent, and a patio table with umbrella and chairs, and another hose. A random lady had $80 in coupons and just handed to me as I was checking out. She GAVE $80 to a complete stranger. How friggin cool is that? Plus everything was tax-free, there was a big sale, we got free delivery, and 0% financing for 12 months (we got 18 months at Best Buy for the TV and such). So on the whole, we did very well. Then I went home and fell asleep.

Upon awaking, we took showers and headed to a chain restaurant called Ruby Tuesday. The food was actually quite good. Then we joined Dr. and Mrs. O. to see The Wedding Crashers. The movie is perfect. Absolutely hysterical. I love it. It reminds me of living with Ryan and Nick for two years. Christopher Walken didn't do much, but I still laugh that he's in the movie. The jokes were funny. I'd say more, but I'm tired again. Just go see it. I'm convinced that Vince Vaughn, the Owen Brothers, Ben Stiller, and Will Farrell are the new Rat Pack. I absolutely am looking forward to many years of watching them together in movies. They really put a smile on my face this evening.

And now I am going to sleep, as I'm on call tomorrow. Hurray!

Here's to hoping I get to write on this here blog at times other than on call. It's 3:53 AM on Sunday morning here in Western Massachusetts. Today has been a long day of patient care. On-call, I only cover three services which is very nice. Most people cover trauma and such, but I have my own service plus two others. When I began the day, we only had about 10 patients. Over the morning, I discharged about 5 of them. However, for some reason the nurses discharged the patients before I could go talk with them, but gosh which doctor actually gets to speak with a patient before they leave the hospital right? (that's sarcasm) So then my list was cut in half plus the patients from my other services that I cover on call. I even discharged someone else's patient. However, now my list is twice as long as it was this morning. That means I've taken all the patients I discharged plus ten more. SWEET! Overall it isn't all that bad, plus Dr. O and Dr. M are here which makes life a bit easier.

At noon I put in a right internal jugular central venous catheter under ultrasound guidance. This is cool, because we use the machine that doctors use to look at babies. However, we use it to see the internal jugular vein and carotid artery. It makes it much easier to put the catheter in the vein. Then the catheter is advanced to just above the right atrium. Then we can give the patient drugs easier, monitor central venous pressure (volume status), and give TPN (total parenteral nutrition...or nutrition through the IV). Oops, about to go to OR. More later...