Belated birthday lunch at the family friendly O'Donovan's. I got some sweet CDs and DVDs, including Billy Idol's Happy Holidays, which is not nearly as bad as one would think.

After Thanksgiving Part II featuring my dad's side of the family and a phenomenal mushroom casserole, I went to Genoa to hang out with the GTBs and play the new Guitar Hero. What a stupid, awesome game.

My grandma is staying with my parents for a few days after taking a fall at home. Luckily she was wearing her Life Alert bracelet. It was really great being able to spend a couple days with her.

Granny: I was so weak from having that cold or flu that I couldn't move. I laid there for an hour before I remembered I had this thing.
Me: What did you say?
Granny: (laughing) "I've fallen and I can't get up."
Me: You didn't.
Granny: Yes, I most surely did. What else was I supposed to say?

I love Thanksgiving at Chef Brandy's . Somebody should pass a law mandating that all turkeys must be brined. Kevin is a pretty good turkey cutter as well.

Corey's wife Mary made me a cake for my birthday, which he brought to class and everyone ate

Somehow turning 31 is infinitely worse than turning 30.

When people find out that Julie is a massage therapist, they usually ask if it's like the Seinfeld episode, to which I reply "Yes". She was nice on my birthday though, and gave me a massage and some kind of sugar scrub that smelled like lavender and heaven.

Today when I bought my new camera, the Best Buy salesman laughed when I told him my old one was a Samsung.

Salesman: I didn't even know they made cameras. Ever.
Me: Yeah, it wasn't a very good camera.
Salesman: I've been selling cameras for years.

From the archives.

A look back to warmer times.

Pictures of papers = boring, but sometimes I have to make do with artifacts, especially with a broken camera and photos taken many days after the fact.

One activity for the Pediatric rotation is a teaching project. We have a topic and a target age range, and we present it to our clinical classmates, who act like members of that age group. This was kind of funny for a few minutes, but the novelty wore off quickly. Adults acting like kids is really irritating, especially young kids. It's a stupid assignment, and I'm not sure why we aren't actually teaching pediatric patients, but whatever. Today we were toddlers, and Michelle gave each of us a toothbrush and we colored pictures. In a couple weeks I have to teach "adolescents" about drug abuse. So dumb.

I wish you got well too.

This is the last picture ever taken by my camera. I was on my way to the Alternative Birthing Center at Illinois Masonic Hospital for a class about the benefits of using a Nurse Midwife, and it totally crapped out on me. The class was informative, and it was kind of fun to be around all of the expecting parents. But I was distracted the whole time, mourning my camera, wondering when I would be able to get a new one, and if I should trust Ashton Kutcher and his apparent love of Nikon.

Good night, Samsung Digimax 430, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

As part of my position at the College of Nursing, I occasionally get shopped out to do odd jobs. A few weeks ago I was recruited to clean up two new ICU beds that were acquired by the Clinical Simulation Lab. There wasn't as much dried blood and unidentifiable fluids as I thought there would be, but definitely enough to be gross.

Up close, you can see that the sign used to say "OPEN 24 HOURS". In my opinion, once you reduce your hours of operation to less than 24 hours a day, you shouldn't advertise how many hours you are open. But maybe it's important for wayward teens to know exactly how much time they have each day to buy cigarettes.

Kristen and James had a benefit in her father's auto shop to raise money for an orphanage in India. The unnamed band, which included Kathryn, James, and Novick, people with whom I used to teach, was very good. James is now the Assistant Dean at Northtown; friends have begun to refer to him as the Ass Dean, which I think would be a fantastic name for the band. If I saw in a newspaper that The Ass Deans were playing, I might be at least intrigued enough to look them up on the internet.

My patient this week was a three week old baby boy who had come in with seizures, hypocalcemia, and presumed meningitis. I had to give him a bunch of oral medications, and based on his facial expressions, phenobarbital must be the nastiest tasting stuff on earth.

It might seem easy to squirt a syringeful of medicine into a baby's mouth and have him successfully swallow it, but not so. On the second day with him, a nurse told me to gradually mix a little medicine with a little formula in a rubber nipple, which worked brilliantly.

He was very cute, and I learned a lot about babies, including the fact that they often urinate on you and themselves when you open the diaper. I got peed on twice before learning this lesson.

The Teen Room is for patients 13 and up, but who could say no to a sick twelve year old who desperately needs to update their Facebook status.

The playroom on the peds floor is pretty sweet. Lots of games, toys, books, and Play-Doh must make a hospital stay a little more bearable.

Apparently someone had some extra wheat bread, biscotti, and seed corn laying around. This pigeon stood motionless in the midst of this feast, probably dreaming of Doritos and discarded Italian beefs.

PRN is an abbreviation for pro re nata, which in Latin means "for the thing born". In the medical field, it means "as needed", and is used to indicate medications and treatments that are not regularly scheduled, but may be administered when the patient needs them.

Because this car was parked in the nursing home lot behind my place, I'm pretty sure it means "Love as needed". If I would have seen it in the parking lot of The Pleasure Chest, I might suspect otherwise.

I went to the Bears game today with Kevin. Alas, a disappointing loss to an overrated team.

My parents drove in to have dinner with me and Katie and her boyfriend Eric's family. Julie and I tagged along.


Julie: Where are we going to dinner?
Me: L. Woods. It's in Lincolnwood.
Julie: Is that that Legally Blonde themed restaurant?
Me: Yes.

Lincoln Square Lanes is a wonderful place.

In high school, I often told my parents I was going bowling, which was code for drinking Icehouse in someone's basement or barn.

Once upon a time, Steve McMichael donated some money to the pediatric unit, so they put his name on a plaque outside a room and hung up an autographed jersey. I'm pretty sure it was worn in a game. I don't think the two infants in the room had any idea they were in the presence of a relic of defensive greatness.

I was happy to see my little buddy discharged today. He had spent a week in the hospital, unable to leave his room the entire time because he was immunocompromised from chemotherapy, which has to be equivalent to kid torture.

Today was the first real day on the pediatric floor. My patient is an awesome 3-year old boy who is in the middle of treatment for leukemia. We got off to a slow start, but by 10am he was laughing and playing and calling me Farty Matt. I look forward to seeing him again tomorrow.

Toddlers and older children have regular hospital beds, but babies stay in horrible metal baby jails.

The storage closet in the Clinical Simulation Lab is super creepy.

On my walk back from voting today, I found a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. I must have made the right choice.

This brings my lifetime found money total to $107, and not a single bill covered in poo.

In my 30 years on this planet, I have twice drunkenly volunteered to help someone move a piano. I'm never drinking again.

Studying is much more bearable when you get to watch football all day.

Julie and I saw W at the Davis tonight. Meh.

I can't wait to see National Guard Warrior with Kid Rock and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Total date movie.