For those who care to track my every movement

(a.k.a. the requisite vacation productivity post… so that on January 2nd, when I’m moaning about how much I still have to do and how I really really really don’t want to go back to clinic yet, I’ll have something to look back on and recall that, oh yes, I actually did knock a few things off the list, didn’t I?)  

This is my class’s first break since July 18th, and good grief, have we needed it. (This was supposed to be the ‘easy’ semester, with the outpatient rotations and predictable hours–what does it say about me if I’m this burned out by the end of just those rotations?!) Aside from the fact that we’re exhausted, we’re also more broke than we’ve ever been in our lives (can someone please explain to me why we receive the same amount of aid to cover a nearly-six-month fall semester as we do for the four-month spring and three-month summer?!). The time off has been fantastic in terms of getting things done, though–when you’re in clinic every weekday from 8a-5p, it’s hard to get anything done in your own life. I call it ‘life maintenance’, and I’ve been pretty efficient at it so far:

Saturday — absolutely lovely Starbucks-fueled walk through the Duke Gardens with a classmate, followed by an absolutely lovely Christmas party at Liz’s, capped off by absolutely lovely drinks at Six Plates with another great friend. Magical first day of break.

Sunday — ran treadmill intervals, got a celebratory end-of-semester massage (quote from the therapist regarding my recently painful knees: “I could have spent SO much longer working on you…”), had coffee and brunch at Scratch with a classmate and her beautiful baby, and hung out with one of my awesome c/o 2013 mentees in the evening.

Monday — insanely productive! Canceled my cable, did my grocery shopping, got my yearly physical and Tanzania travel consult (four shots, three prescriptions), got my car’s oil changed and tires rotated, cashed in an about-to-expire LivingSocial to get the car washed and vacuumed, then went to Wine Down Monday (half off all bottles…) at Firebirds with a good friend.

Tuesday — went to the girly doctor (hush; this was a long time coming; there may even be a post about it later, though I promise I won’t go into gory detail), had frozen yogurt with a classmate, then came home, did laundry, and spent entirely too much time finagling my apartment’s electronic setup.

Wednesday — wasted most of the day on this blog migration :-) but also did some pretty serious cleaning and Goodwill-ing. Went to my instructor’s last BodyTone class (*sob*), then went out with some friends.

Thursday — coffee date followed by LivingSocial dinner at Tallula’s with my second awesome 2013 mentee. Not entirely sure where the rest of the day went, which I think is a mark of a successful vacation day…

So far, today has consisted of me sleeping until past noon (!), then being awakened by the phone when the friend I’d promised to meet for lunch called to inquire whether I had perhaps died in my sleep. Anyway, we had a lovely lunch at Vita and now I’m back home. Going to go work out shortly, and then tomorrow I’m having brunch with my third awesome 2013 mentee (yeah, I sort of collect them) and going to dinner and a comedy show with a few Raleigh friends. Sunday I’m helping some good friends move into their recently-purchased first home (!!!). Monday and Tuesday are still mostly open (noteworthy for the Duke-UNCG basketball game on Monday night), and then I’m headed down to Florida on Wednesday to spend some time with my family. I still have a few things to get done before then — some big, some small — but it’s amazing how much ‘cleaner’ my brain feels without all those extraneous small personal-life concerns nibbling around the edges, never able to really make their way in and compete with the things like, oh, a two-hour pediatrics exam or a 45-minute presentation on Tanzania.

17 vacation days left, and I plan to soak up every one of them…

My continuing Applification

Also competing in the category of ‘why didn’t I just do this in the first place?!’, we have Apple TV.

For those who aren’t familiar, Apple TV is basically a streaming device to allow one to play web- and iTunes-based content via the TV. It costs $99, so for years I’d been doing ‘everything but’—I’ve been paying for cable in this new apartment, I’ve been getting the Netflix discs rather than the streaming, and I even bought a $25 cable last week to try to use my MacBook Pro itself as a makeshift Apple TV. None of this was really working all that well—I watched cable maybe once a week (Glee!), the computer-to-TV adapter I bought couldn’t carry audio from my (older) MacBook Pro, and the Netflix discs of course arrived several days apart (and I rarely had time to watch more than two or three a month, anyway)—but dammit, I was saving money. Somehow.

Then my Apple AirPort wireless router died, so I went without for a couple of weeks, using an Ethernet cable (which of course didn’t work with my &*@^% school-issued PC) and scavenging free wireless connections where I could. After a little research, I realized that the AirPort I had (which I’d bought used) was actually approaching its tenth year of existence. Thus, I forgave it the extreme faux pas of giving up the ghost whilst bearing an Apple logo (blasphemy!), and decided that, assuming the cost was going to be spread over another decade, the investment in a new one was, in fact, probably worth it.

Somewhere in this confusing analysis of electronic devices and cost-benefit ratios, I ended up investigating the AirPlay feature of the Apple AirPort (and the awesome free Remote app for iPhone), which led me back to the option of Apple TV. After crunching a few numbers, talking to my sister (who owns one), and taking a good look at what I pay for versus what I actually watch, I realized that my current setup was both practically and financially ridiculous. I canceled my cable (keeping my Internet, but still saving me $54 per month), switched Netflix to streaming (no additional cost), and… drumroll… bought an Apple TV.

Verdict? So far, it is absolutely amazing. (See above comment re: why why whyyyy didn’t I just do this from the start?!) I’m currently working my way through all six seasons of The Wonder Years (don’t judge) and my lovely sister has agreed to share with me her vast collection of digitized movies and TV shows when I go home next week, so I will soon have even more content at my disposal. Also, an unforeseen perk is that, when I play music through Apple TV, if I do it with the Remote app (which, again, is super cool, and FREE), I can stream music simultaneously through the TV and my MacBook Pro. In other words, the laptop functions like a separate wireless speaker that I can place anywhere I want. Not that I throw a whole lot of parties in this 500sf apartment, but hey, who needs a party to appreciate a well-balanced audio system? Not this girl.

In other words, good decision (that is significantly contributing to my enjoyment of this lovely winter break!), and I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

The times, they are a-changin’…

It’s time for a change. I’ve had essentially the same Blogger website and personalized template since I started blogging almost nine years ago, and my tastes are no longer quite so, um, pastel. I do wish I could have just changed my template and stayed with Blogger, and thus kept the address that everyone already knows, but there just wasn’t a design that spoke to me… and furthermore, I am no longer in possession of the scads of free time and endless persistence that are most definitely required in order to successfully tweak one’s own personal template into a format that is simultaneously clean, organized, practical, appealing, and maintenance-free. In other words, while there will always be a soft spot in my heart for Blogger and its ease of use, I do think WordPress has officially won me over.

Having said that, I’m going to try to be better about posting on a more regular and frequent basis. School has successfully (and rightfully) put the fear of god into us about HIPPA violations and patient privacy, so there will obviously be huge chunks of my life that I won’t be able to post… but you know, I am more than just a PA education, dammit, and I truly miss blogging. The silver lining is that my emails to friends have definitely gotten longer (someone said the other day, ‘oh, good, an email from Jess; let me go get another cup of coffee!’), but rather than put the onus on any one person in terms of replies, why not just put it all out there into the world?

Anyway, so I’m in the process of trying to migrate nine years’ worth of old content from Blogger to WP. This is not proving to be as easy or seamless as perhaps it should be (story of my life), and this page is looking quite interesting at the moment (posts from 2004 are showing up next to posts from 2011); however, I’m not quite ready to give up yet. We’ll see what happens. Either way, this is my new home, so stay tuned.

P.S. My real-life stethoscope is actually not purple. But ‘burgundy’ just didn’t have quite the same ring to it… :-)