want a garden by the ocean tide

So I was home visiting my family last week (for my grandpa's 80th birthday!), and I received this very lovely present from my sister Jen:

She threw this flowerpot and tray (or whatever the bit is called that goes under a flowerpot to catch the water) in her ceramics class, and I cannot wait to get some herbs planted into it. I think a big bunch of parsley would look great with the gorgeous glaze. She had also done me a huge favor and glazed a porcelain pot that I had thrown, according to the date carved in the bottom, in 2002:

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I've done any ceramics work. It was something I loved in high school, and I always thought I'd keep it up, but I haven't really touched a wheel since then. (2002, of course, was after I graduated, but if I recall, my ceramics teacher had let me come back the summer after freshman year and play around a bit, which is when I had made that bowl.) I think both knitting - and cooking, to some extent - have fulfilled some of that creative urge, but I do miss the alchemy of taking a lump of mud and turning it into something pretty and useful. Another item to add to my fantasy farm: a wheel and a kiln to share space with the apple orchard and the goats. (I do know how ridiculous this is. Watch I spend the rest of my life living in Manhattan, growing miniaturized fruit trees on the roof and hiding a chicken coop up there from the zoning department like a crazy person.) Anyway. I had really just wanted to share the pretty pictures.

In other news, Ben and I went to go see Chris Rock last night at the Palace Theatre downtown. He was, of course, absolutely hilarious, and I'm not sure if my abs are hurting today from yesterday's workout or from laughing so hard. He had a number of political-oriented segments, and a really interesting bit about white privilege, where he discussed the people who live in his upper-class neighborhood in New Jersey. The four black homeowners in this community are him, Mary J. Blige, Denzel Washington and Jay-Z. All extremely famous people who are superlatively good at what they do. And yet the white guy who lives next door is a dentist, "not a great dentist, not in the Dental Hall of Fame, but a yank-your-teeth-out dentist." The punchline of the segment was along the lines of: "And do you know what a black dentist would have to do to live in this neighborhood? He'd have to invent teeth!" And it's a very funny line, and it's really a great example of what makes Chris Rock's comedy so hilarious, which is that it's absolutely spot-on true. Not literally, obviously, but this segment of his show very clearly illustrates what it means to have white privilege and how the lack of privilege manifests itself in day-to-day life for people of color. (If you've taken a sociology class in the last ten years, I'm sure you've seen this, but more for my own future reference, a link to "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," which is the article that really made the idea of white privilege real and immediate for me - and, I think, the one that first defined it in the academic literature.) At any rate, it was a great show, and also something I'll be thinking about for a while.

(A parting quotation from Robert Heinlein on humor: "Of course it wasn't funny; it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh. I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people - and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing.... I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people.")

(I sometimes wonder what Heinlein was like in real life. It must have been rough on your psyche to hang out with him all day long, but it just might have been worth it.)

title from "Nolita Fairytale," Vanessa Carlton

I will not be afraid of women

(Dar Williams may be the most quotable songwriter on the planet.)

I am post-call and have not yet browsed all of this - or even most of it - but check out this collection of thoughts and opinions: "Feminism is not your expectation." Thought-provoking and interesting.

Because I love academics being totally geeky and calling it work: No, I'm not telling you what it's about.

It's hailing here. Profusely. How likely is it, do you think, that tomorrow's admissions are all elderly ladies who slipped and fell and have been hanging out in the ED all night? I hope not very likely. We'll see, I guess. (Also, I've apparently forgotten how to compose the future past tense. Did I completely mess that up back there? And is that even what it's called? Sarah, help me out.)

That's really it, I think. New yarn was recently purchased in a fit of optimism, fueled by the realization that, Oh, crap, it's not that far till Christmas. I really haven't done anything interesting lately, except work through the weekend and think about metabolic acidosis and morbid obesity.

How are you?

Back into the fray

So this research thing is coming to an end, and I'm starting my internal medicine clerkship at UH on Monday. I'm hoping to post occasionally, if only to get my own thoughts in order regarding this medicine thing, but if there's radio silence for a while here, that's the reason.

Ben was out playing poker with some colleagues last night, and I had a rather delightful evening at home - I curled up in bed, watched the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (and disc one of The Two Towers - shhh) and knit like crazy. I'm now almost halfway through Henry, and it's definitely looking scarf-like, which is gratifying. I had hoped to finish this before, well, now, but at least I finally feel like I'm making progress. (I really need to get my act together and dig out the camera.)

Last weekend was so much fun with Ben's parents - we had a big dinner party on Saturday, which I utterly failed to photograph - but it was really a great time. Everyone brought just amazing food, and my maiden attempt at chicken cacciatore was pretty successful. (I had a lot of help from my grandmother via telephone, but it worked out all right.) And it was really lovely to get to spend some time with Ben's parents. Lola and I did not make it to a yarn shop, though, so she'll have to come visit again.

That's really about it here, I think - this past week has consisted mostly of frantically getting my research manuscript together. It ended up cohering into something I'm fairly proud of (although I totally need a sexier title, as "Associations Among Patient Demographic Characteristics and Cancer Care Practices in the Early Treatment Phase of Advanced Cancer" is pretty yawn-inducing), and we'll be shopping it around to a few journals in January, probably. It's nothing ground-breaking, and will probably end up in some journal with a fifteen-word title, but it's nice to have something completed.

Oh! Ben and I going to Table 45 tonight, as a last-date-before-I'm-living-at-the-hospital sort of thing. I'll report back - the menu looks amazing, and it's been getting pretty good reviews in the Cleveland press, so hopefully we're in for some deliciousness tonight.

Edited to add: Also, I'm not sure if anyone I know in real life is doing it, but I'm sending well-wishes out into the ether for everyone doing NaNoWriMo - every November I think I'll try it, but each year I am just not brave enough. Maybe next year.

Back Home

Ben and I had a lovely mini-vacation yesterday! His company had purchased a block of tickets to the Indians vs the A's last night, and so we joined his coworkers for dinner and drinks before the game down at Jacob's Field. (We won! Go Tribe! ....and I've officially been living in Cleveland for a long time.) After the game, we headed over to The Corner Alley, which is this great combination of restaurant, martini bar and bowling alley. We'd been once before, and it works unexpectedly well - they've built the place such that there's really almost no noise from the lanes, and the dining area is visually separated from the bar-and-bowling area, and it's just a lot of fun. (And for the record - their creme brulee martini? Totally worth the drive downtown.) I haven't really been down to East Fourth much, and I was pleasantly surprised - the street is closed to car traffic between Euclid and Prospect and it has this almost European feel:


(Photo taken from http://www.east4thstreet.com/ - I managed to forget my camera last night.)

I had somehow missed the fact that The Corner Alley, the House of Blues, Lola and Flannery's (all places I've visited and enjoyed) are all right on the same little pedestrian street here.

The reason this excursion became a mini-vacation, though, was that we didn't have to schelp back to the east side at 1 am, but stayed at the Hyatt downtown (which is right across the street from the Corner Alley). Ben's boss has been singing the praises of Priceline, and we scored a room at this lovely hotel for $35! Click this link to see the hotel lobby - the first floor is all shops and restaurants, and the hotel itself is very quaint and 1920's looking on the outside (the doors to the rooms had letter slots! Soldered shut now, but still) yet the rooms themselves are modern and very nicely done.

We had a lovely time, and I was completely charmed by Cleveland's downtown - we joke about the Rust Belt, and there is some truth in that, but downtown is really revitalizing itself. We had dinner, watched the game, went out for drinks and then back to our hotel, all happening within half a mile of each other. And though there were definitely people around - last night's game was sold out - the crowds were still manageable, unlike what a similar evening would have been like in New York, for example. And the hotel room cost $35! Which still blows my mind. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the opportunity to play the tourist at home.

In knitting news, I am determined to finish the silk scarf this weekend - all that fringe makes me want to cry, but I will be brave, because it will be pretty. I've decided to nix the beading - I think I'd probably just end up smacking myself in the face with it, and really, that's no fun for anyone. And I'm on the hunt for some suitably drab dark gray sock yarn with which to knit Henry - I promised Ben a scarf last April, and, well, it's getting to be that time of year. The idea of a 452 stitch 24 row repeat terrifies me a little, but the pattern does seem to be one of those that seems way more complicated written down than it will actually be to knit. We'll see how it goes.

Edited to add: It seems I have unfairly slandered my beloved - once he saw a forest green yarn held against his gray coat, Ben decided to go for a little more color in his winter wardrobe. Which thrills me, because the mere thought of knitting an entire scarf in fingering weight dark gray yarn made my eyes hurt. So - thanks, Ben! (And sorry about the drab thing.) We'll be buying yarn tomorrow....