spunkylizard

My final weeks in surgery were spent on urology.  It takes a special kind of person to do urology.  They tend to have a good sense of humor and be quite outgoing.  Some of them have to learn a little tact in discussing these problems with people.  For me, it was way too many genitals for one week. 

The urology department at my university is currently ahving a slow time.  One attending quit, one got demoted, and the third is simply overworked.  But at least he is really good.  He interacts with the students and the residents constantlyy, promoting a great learning environment and allowing for interaction.  Unfortunately, one attending is not enough to keep a good program going, so tehre was still a shortage of cases.

Procedures:
Urethral repair: 1 (This was awesome.)
Cystoscopy: 5
Transcutaneous nephrostomy: 2
Removal of tubes: Lots.  (They put a lot of tubes up there.)

Overall, urology is not for me.  The people were great.  The work was itneresting, but it didn't get me excited.

Two more notes, one good and one bad.  First the bad.  The second student on my team was a slacker.  I would go to procedures and follow the residents on the floor to help and to get the opportunities to learn.  he would sneak off to find time to study.  This is good for me, and bad for him.  Since this is the second section I have worked with him, it was exactly what I had expected.  However, by the end he was starting to think that I was trying to make him look bad.  I thought he was doing a perfectly fine job of this on his own.  He asked me to skip a surgery so he would have a chance to be there on his own.  I still think he is a jerk, but so does everyone else who has worked with him.

On a good note, during the surgery I skipped for him, I was trying to finalize plans for travelling to my grandfather's funeral.  When I informed the residents that I would be leaving for a couple of days, they told me not to worry about trying to make up the time or coming in for the next couple fo days at all.  They were great to work with. 

Surgery summary: Nothing really caught my eye.  If I do end up in surgery, it will probably be adult otolaryngology (ENT).  But I will be looking elsewhere for my career.

There are a couple of veteran's administration hospitals in St. Louis which are trying to get a couple of things under control, namely morbidity and mortality.  This is where I went for my two weeks of general surgery.  The VA is known for certain aspects taht are unique from other American hospitals but have been rumored in socialized medicine.  These include lack of attention to detail, poor information management, and failure of staff to complete orders.  The combination of tehse factors leads to the residents and students having to either do everything or follow up constantly on the teams that are consulted.  We spent a lot of time doing all of these things.

General surgery is generally associated with the abdomen, which means hernias and bowel obstruction.  Since there is not an independent vascular team at the VA, we also did the vascular surgery.  One of the nice things about the VA is how involved the students are.  Students are allowed to do many things that they are not allowed to do at the university, including some of the suturing and cutting, changing bandages, replacing chest tubes, and about anything else, short of performing the surgery, that the student asks to do.  This leads to a great opportunity for the students to learn.

However, all the surgeries we performed were limited in scope.  Any patient who is high risk is sent out on a fee-basis to one of the two medical schools in town to decrease morbity and mortality at the VA proper.  This is an administrative way of fixing intrinsic problems.  The high mortality could be due to a combination of factors, including letting students do too much, not having sufficient followup from staff, and having old veterans who don't present for medical care until it is too late to do antyhing.

Procedures:
Hernia reductions:  3 - midline, bilateral inguinal, and inguinal.
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy: 1
AV fistula repair: 1
Peritoneal catheter placement: 1
Sebaceous cyst removal: 1
Lower limb arteriogram: 1

Tubes placed: 1
Tubes removed: 5

Overall, I loved teh residents and attendings at the VA.  They were very willing to engage the students and teach.  One of the residents would provide pertinent questions for the students to research, and then he would follow up the next day with the attending present to provide corrections.  From a teaching standpoint, this was teh most well run team I have been on.  They did an excellent job of involving students and making them think through the processes.

While I loved the people, I hated teh subject.  I decided that general surgery was not for me when i saw the first failed colostomy bag (an external drain for stool).  Since there is a lot of work on the bowel, the floor frequently smell of stool.  If they cleaned more often or more effecetively, this would not be a problem.  However, in a government run and funded hospital, there is some lack of cleanliness.  The wards always smelled, and there was little that could be done.  

But I made it through the two weeks.  I learned a lot.  Now I get to move on to urology.

Ear Nose and Throat doctors are often referred to as the "pretty boys" of surgery.  The surgeons would respond by saying they are the ones who are smart enough to choose a surgical specialty that allows them to have time off and is relatively interesting.

I spent half of my time in ENT on pedeatrics and half on adult medicine.  I will go through them separately since they are very different.

Pediatric procedures:
Ear tubes: lots
Tonsil/adenoidectomies: lots
Cochlear implants: 2 (one adult)
Laryngeal polyp removal: 2

That is not a lot of variety.  Pediatric ootolarygology was fairly boring.  We worked with kids with obstructive sleep apnea, hearing loss, or other congenital or peripartum acquired abnormalities.  While the physicians were great to work with, I learned that I do not enjoy working with sick kids, and pediatrics is likely to be very boring.

Adult procedures:
Mandible repair: 2
Parotidectomy: 1
Thyroidectomy: 1

While that may seem like a short list, the shortest surgery took three hours.  Adult ENT was much more interesting.  Much of adult ENT deals with cancer, mostly secondary to smoking.  We counciled a lot of people to stop smoking.  (Lesson 1: Don't smoke.)  ENTs also deal with a lot of facial trauma including people who get smahed in fights or motor vehicle accidents.  These are interesting, but I liked the cancer surgeries better.  I did not find the hearing portion of ENT to be very interesting.  

Lesson 2: If you try to commit suicide, do everyone a favor and DON'T MISS.  When someone puts a gun in their mouth or under their jaw and shoots, they better hit the brain.  We had two failed attempts in two weeks, resulting in one man who will not be able to eat anything more appetizing than a milk shake for the next three months.  At that point, the metastatic cancer will kill him.  In the meantime, he now has to deal with the severe trauma he caused himself, and his family has to deal with his misery as well.  The other failed suicide attempt lost an eye.  Neither are likely to be much happier anytime soon.

Summary: Adult ENT is much more interesting than pediatrics, but it still did not grab me. 

I have survived the first two weeks of the third year of medical school.  Over the next year, I will be writing about the experiences that I ahve had and how much I enjoy the various rotations that I am on mostly for a couple of reasons.  First, I will eventually ahve to decide what I want to do when I grow up, so I have to know what I enjoy.  Recording these reactions will give me a way to remember the clerkships and specialties taht I ahve worked in.  Second, there are some pretty interesting things that happen.  Third, I have to provide a review for each clerkship, and this will provide me a way to remember the things taht happened during the early portions of each clerkship.

The first two weeks was spent on Vascular Surgery.   

Procedures:  
Venograms:  multiple
Angiograms:  2
Femoral-popliteal bypass: 2
Below the knee amputation: 1
Carotid stent:  1
L5-S1 fusion: 1 (Multidisciplinary surgery with ortho-spine)

This specialty provided a variety of procedures, including the almost bloodless venograms to the barbaric amputations.  For example, a fem-pop bypass takes almost five hours to complete.  It is elegant and smooth.  On the other hand, amputations involve surgeons pulling out large knives and breaking bones.  These are less bloody than they used to be, but they are still very brutal.

Overall, vascular surgery was interesting.  There is a lot of radiation exposure since the venograms and arteriograms all require perioperative x-rays frequently to determine the patency of vessels at various parts of the body.  However, these are also extremely interesting procedures.

In this rotation, I was reminded that I have forgotten a lot about medicine in the last few years.  It will take some time to catch back up.  I also was reminded taht there are a lot of jerks in the world.  Jerks who give presentations on professionalism and suppressing your inner jerk.  Ain't hypocrisy grand.  A lot of people laughed when they heard this particular surgeon gave this lecture.

Overall, not my cup of tea.  The service was slow while I was on it, so they did not ahve a lot of things to do.  Also, I am just getting used to sitting and waiting for attending physicians.  This involves either looking like a fool while trying to study books in the hall or simply not doing anything in the hall and looking like a fool that is simply hanging around.  

I am sure life will get better, but I did not enjoy this service.  The fellow I worked with was great, but I still left with a sour taste.  hopefully things will get better, but we will ahve to see.

Next up:  Otolaryngology (Ear-nose-and-throat).
Preferred long-term goal: Radiation oncology.

Over the last few weeks, I have been busy with a number of things. 

First, our car died, so we went and bought a new one.  We managed to find a Kia Spectra (02) that we liked that was also relatively cheap ($2400).  Since this will primarily be used to drive to work and back, this car works great.

Next, I worked in the clinic on the geritarics team for a couple of weeks to become reaquainted with how to interact with actual patients.  I have been working with serum samples without actually seeing any patients for so long, I thought a brief refresher would be nice before restarting the third year medical school cirriculum.  

This last week, I wrapped things up in the lab, including trying to finalize a paper, finishing any training for those who are staying, and answering a lot of questions taht people would have figured out without me.  Needless to say, the last week has mostly served to annoy me because of the vollume of bad questions that I ahve had to answer.  Thus, I am leaving a day earlier than I originally planned.

Now I ahve to figure out what to do for the next three weeks before my surgery rotation starts.  I am heading to Nebraska for a couple of days to see our friends/distant relatives before they move to Idaho.  Our family is also coming out for a weekend.  But I will still be left with a lot of time to fill.  If anyone has good suggestions, pass them along.  Vacation only lasts for a few weeks, and I have to make the most of it!

About two weeks ago, we were informed that the Dread Pirate's science fair project had been selected for the city/regional science fair.  Unfortunately, they were supposed to set up the presentation on May 5th.  Since I was defending my thesis that day, we were going to be a little busy.  Luckily, another parent said they would set up the project for us.  

Judging and presentations for the fair were Wednesday night, shortly after our family left town.  Unfortunately, we had other things on our mind, and we completely forgot about the science fair project.  However, Kx was lucky enough to volunteer at school yesterday for teacher appreciation day.  She was present in the classroom when the science teacher for the school presented the Dread Pirate with his second place ribbon.  Evidently, he was very excited.  Until his teacher asked him how the presentation went.  We know he has matured emotionally because he did not start crying.  He had tears, but no sobbing.  We felt terrible.

Last night, we had a little party to celebrate the success of our second grader who did an excellent job on his science fair.  While we helped him organize and finalize things, we made sure that he did most of the work, including typing the segments of his presentation into the computer.  He did a great job.

Congratulations Dread Pirate!

I meant to post yesterday, but it got delayed because of sheer laziness.  

On Monday, I presented my oral defense for my dissertation.  In short, I passed.

Now the longer story.

Over the last month, I have worked very hard in preparing to summarize the work I did over the last four years in a talk of one hour.  This is very difficult, as this work includes what will end up being four scientific publications, two of which are primarily my work.  At first, we limited the talk to the two that were primarily my work with a brief summary of a third.  But we continually ran into time problems.  The talk continued to be close to 90 minutes rather than sixty.  We decided to remove an entire section.  It is still included int he thesis; just not in the oral defense.  We now had a set of data that could be presented in one hour.

The second problem was making the speech comprehensible to people without a background in both statistics and viral genetics.  Aside from my wife, father, and sister, many of the scientist in the room were not entirely comfortable with the statistics we are using to describe differences in viral variability and evolution.  I decided to use a pictoral representation of the diversity of our groups, highlighting the facets that were being compared.  This seemed to work really well, and I got positive  comments about it later.

The defense was scheduled to last about an hour, with a followup ten to fifteen minute question period for the audience.  This would then be followed by a committee meeting including a second questioning period.  What I did not expect was the thirty minute public questioning period.  Most of the questions were insightful and probed specific aspects of the project to clarify related issues, including moving the work to a pre-therapy test for determining response to therapy based on viral genetic factors.  After the extended public questioning, my committee decided that no further questioning was necessary, and they briefly met simply to sign the ballots.  

That is how I got my PhD.  What is not described is the long agonizing over the last month despite knowing that they were not likely to fail me.  I stress about little things, but that is one way that I remain competitive.  My family came out a couple of days early, so they helped me relax.  They also stayed for a couple of extra days to help me wind down and celebrate.  The big party was Monday night: our fourth annual Cinco de Mayo party.  Seventy eight people attended, and everyone said they had a great time.  

Now I am back in the lab trying to tie up loose ends before returning to medical school in a couple of weeks.

I think this confused the little guy for a while.  When we mentioned potty training, he would start looking for a locomotive.  At one point he even chimed in with a "choo choo."  But he has now gotten over that.

Now he wears the train.  His favorite underwear now have Thomas on the back, with a big smile and everything.  He loves them.  They have even beaten out the Spiderman set that he got first.  

We got him interested when we mentioned that big boys wear underwear.  He always wants to be big.  His two favorite people, at times, are his older brother and sister.  He always wants to do what they do, and that means he has to be big.  After six months of encouraging him to try to use the toilet, we finally found something that worked.  AFter he caught the bug, he was free from diapers in less than a week.  

But yesterday was the firsts accident free day.  It happened on our anniversary, which was nice.  He made it all night and all day without getting Thomas dirty, and he was so proud of himself.  

Now we just have to keep it going.

About two weeks ago we were able to buy a slightly used elliptical from a friend that is moving to Pittsburgh. They sold it to us for two reasons. First, they don't want to move it.  Second, they won't have room for it in their new place.  As a result, we got a shiny almost new elliptical for our basement to go along with our recumbent bike.

The first day I tried it out, it wasn't pretty.  Remember that I exercise four to six times a week on our bike for 15-40 minutes. Unfortunately, elliptical motions are much more similar to running than stationary bikes.  They require many more muscles and you can get a much more intense workout in much less time.  On day one, a managed fifteen minutes, and I paid for it over the next few days.  I was sore in many places that have not been worked out in a long time.  I was walking around like a muscle-bound jock.  Fine, walking in this sense is a general term.  A penguin-like waddle is probably closer to the truth.  

Do I let that deter me?  No!  I go back a couple of days later for twenty minutes.  Twenty-five the next day.  Thirty the day after that.  I now have the time down, but my speed on these workouts is quite low.  I am just glad to get the time back up to where I wanted it.

In the last week, I have been working on the speed.  I decided that I want to go three miles as fast as I can.  As of this morning, that is now under fifteen minutes.  I follow this up by moving to the bike for fifteen minutes.  A half hour workout: half bike and half elliptical.  This has worked really well in keeping my knee in good condition along with giving me a good workout.

I have really enjoyed the elliptical.  It simulates running a lot better than any of the other low impact activities I have tried.  I have wanted one for a while, but it was not in the budget.  We lucked into this one, and we will have to decide what we want to do with it in a couple of years when we move. 

I have a friend who asked me to do the following list.  So here it goes.  She actually asked me yesterday, but it got put off until today, because my answer to question 2 included some rather lengthy items.

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
10 years ago I was finishing my mission (church service) in Los Angeles.  I was either in Bell  or Watts at the time.  This is about the time I moved between the two places.

2. 5 things on my to-do list today.
Yesterday:
Finish edits on the thesis draft.  
Compile thesis and abstract.
Deliver thesis to the graduate school.
Be back in time for 4:30 seminar on Ebola virus.
Catch up on helping all of the people in the lab I have been putting off all week.

Today:
Prepare RNA for RNA binding assay.  This is my last formal experiment.
Seminar at noon.
Get a free burrito at MacDonalds, but I missed that already.
Go home early.
Enjoy game night.

3. Things I would do if I were suddenly a billionaire
Pay off my house Buy a new house and pay off student loans.  I would probably replace my car, too.  (223,000 miles and counting)  I would take a trip to Europe.  I would start a scholarship endowment at Utah State University and donate to Saint Louis University, the two universities that I have been trained at.  

I would join the 21st century and get a cell phone and iPod.

I would probably invest a lot of money to ensure future income.  Then I would finish school.

4. 2 of my bad habits
Playing Nintendo.  Either the original NES or the old Super Nintendos.  The newer ones don't hold my attention as well.
I've become a pretty big complainer about a number of things.  This seems to coincide with my increasing education and getting old and opinionated.

5. Places I've Lived
West Valley, Utah
Boise, Idaho
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Logan, Utah
Seoul, Korea
Los Angeles, California
Bountiful, Utah
St. Louis, Missouri

6. 5 jobs I've had
Newspaper boy
Telephone research
Teaching assistant
Organic chemist
Pathology lab technologist
I currently get paid to attend school.  Does that count?

7. 5 things that people don't know about me
I currently own over 150 games.  Yes, this makes me strange.
I am currently listening to rap music, something I would never have done 5 years ago.
I still wish that I could go running at least three times a week.  Running was my crack.  The third knee surgery was like rehab.
I don't like camping, but I go anyway to please my family.
I'm a food snob.  There are many times that I would rather not eat than eat something that doesn't interest me or tastes worse than something I can make at home.  On the plus side, we buy less ice cream since we got an ice cream maker.

While I think these can be fun, I won't ask anyone else to do this, but you can if you want to.   

But, unfortunately, I have to go through it a couple of more times.  I will be editing the thesis this weekend for grammar.  The concepts are down.  Now we just have to make it sound nice.  

That being said, I have already read the thing about 20 times, and I am not looking forward to reading it any more.   I may not be the best one to read it for gramar since I am now anticipating what it will say.  This is where having an editor would be very handy.

I am getting close to finishing my thesis.  The whole thing is written and we are down to the last editing bit.  Most of the chapters are even down to fine polishing.  The only chapter left which needs hefty work is the conclusion.

This is a good thing, because it looks like Kx will have to take off for the next week, meaning that I will likely have kid duty while trying to finish my thesis.  I get to cut back on the hours at the office to a more reasonable 35 hours, finishing the rest at home after everyone is asleep.  We'll just have to see how this all works out.

I had a committee meeting yesterday, and we are moving forward with a date for my thesis defense.  If nothing comes up soon, I will be defending my thesis on May 5th.

I guess I can call it independence day. 

I have been accused of being reluctant to take my kids to the doctor, and that is true.  The really odd part of that is that I am the one going to medical school.

I still remember the time at my sister's house that the Dread Pirate sliced his hand open.  I made us wait until the bleeding had gone down a little before running to the emergency room for stitches.  That wait was only 15 minutes.  This time I clocked in at two weeks.

The Dread Pirate slipped on the stairs at the beginning of the month.  To understand the story you have to know a little about the DP.  He has decided that it is better to live life normally even if vomiting.  If you are sick, mom and dad make you stay home, and you are not allowed to play with friends.  And this applies double for germ stock exchanges such as pre-schools and nursery at church.  

In this case, the DP wasn't sick, but he did hurt himself again.  He fell down the stairs at the beginning of January.  It hurt for a couple of days, but he stopped complaining quickly.  He continued to do all of his normal activities, including running and jumping, but we (being the royal we meaning Kx) noticed that the DP was limping slightly.  She asked him about this, and he said that his foot hurt when he extended it.  We checked it out, and decided he needed to see the doctor.  After being referred to a pediatric orthopedist, the DP is walking around in a boot while his tibia becomes unbroken.

Go us.  

As a note for others, little children do not sprain their ankle.  They break their bones.  The ligaments are strong enough to break their bones before they will stretch or tear.  I'll know this for when I restart medical school in a couple of months, or if I have another kid hobbled.

Howdy everyone! If there is still anyone out there.

I am writing today to update everyone on what is going on in my life, and where things stand with moving forward. It doesn't always seem like I am making any progress, but that is the way things go.

School/work: Being a professional student makes this a difficult distinction. Fortunately, there has been some progress towards the next graduation (doctorate degree). I recently received a nice letter from the graduate school informing me that if I want to march or go through the hooding ceremony this year I need to have my final thesis in to the Graduate school by the beginning of March. This is simply not going to happen, but that does not mean that I can't graduate. I am currently planning on defending in May and restarting medical school in June/July. I have a meeting with my committee on February sixth to try and finalize plans.  

In the meantime, we got the first viral genetics paper published in August, my viral evolution paper is under review, and two other papers are being prepared and submitted. The research on these issues should be done, and I'll provide references for the final papers to anyone who wants them via e-mail.

As for the biochemistry work, this has been the big hold for the last two years. After spending over six months of effort trying to measure ribavirin use, we finally decided to quit on the ribavirin incorporation project, and we found a collaborator to do the work for us. We are trying to hammer out the details with them right now, and that is taking up way too much time. I thought I had completed my work on this issue, but we decided we needed one more experiment (RNA binding assay) to "complete" the project. This week, I am working on the controls and setup for that, and I should be able to get them done next week barring any technical issues or setbacks. That means I may have them done by the end of March, if I'm lucky. That paper has been mostly written for two years, but I will have to rewrite portions of the paper.

Piano: We ended up getting a nice 1908 upright grand piano, but the moving company which was licensed, bonded, and insured dropped it on its side in our living room. K. was there and saw the whole thing. The workers tried to stand it up and leave without checking to see if it worked. K. picked up the broken pieces of molding and insisted they check the piano and send out a piano refinisher.  

The damage: The lid, I don't know the technical term, had broken off and all of the dowels and fasteners were broken. Some of the molding had fallen off. These are both rather trivial items. The real problem was the sound board was broken.  

Now, since this was a company that advertised that they moved pianos I assumed that they would know SOMETHING about them, like the fact that sound quality is dependent on an intact sound board. This is an example of me overestimating the intelligence of contractors, like our problems we had with removing the tree 18 months ago. They are piano morons. They tried to send a wood working specialist in to repair the molding, and they tried to claim that the sound board was previously broken despite none of their workers checking it and our signed statement from the people we purchased it from stating that we had checked it prior to purchasing the piano and discovered an intact sound board.

I don't like the idea of suing people, but sometimes it just needs to happen. We took them to court. Since we are working with a reputable business, they didn't show up. Now we just have to figure out how to collect the money.  We tried to garnish the money from the canceled check, but that failed. However, we did get the name of the owner, and we will be attaching their name to the judgment. If anyone has recommendations, we are open to thoughts.

The kids: The Dread Pirate is enjoying second grade. He is in the Chess club this year, so he always wants to play with me. I am so out of practice, but I can still beat a second grader. Eventually, he will start beating me, but for now he can stay close until the midgame.

Hiss is enjoying pre-school. She now knows most of her letters. At first she wasn't very interested, but when she discovered that letters can be put together to make words, letters gained instant credibility. She also finished her first dance class and can be found dancing around the living room.

Baggins, who needs a new nickname since he is now a skinny little kid, just started a really young pre-school whose goal is to teach the kids to sit still for a lesson so they can learn letters next year. But he loves it. He walks around with his little backpack on all day just trying to be big like Hiss and the DP.  

As for K., she is doing fine. She recently started Weight Watchers, and she is trying really hard. However, success is slower than she would like. She is running the two pre-schools for our kids. The real kicker is the work as Relief Society President (women's group leader for our church), which is still taking up a lot of time. She, and I, have gotten used to it over the last 30 months, but the leaders say they are never going to let her go. I'm betting they may realize in about 6 months when I start the third year of medical school that I am not as much of a support at home once I go from working 50 hours a weeks to about 70. We will just have to see. 

Anyway, I hope it will not be another nine months before posting again, so things should be updated more regularly.

WE are thinking about getting a piano. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about which piano to buy, and all of our relatives are a long way from here. So, naturally, I am turning to the people who read my stuff to get opinions.

The Dread Pirate is starting piano lessons, and I am trying to learn, slowly as usual. I know playing piano is not a very piraty thing to do, but he enjoys it. I have been able to play enough to pick out my notes to sing to, but litle more for years, and I would really like to play better.

In the spirit of learning, please tell me what brand you would recommend in an upright as well as a digital piano and why. Also, please tell me if you prefer the digital or the real piano. We are not considering a grand for space as well as monetary reasons. We may have a chance to get a piano since a local store is going out of business, but we may just wait to find a used one since no one here is any good at playing one right now. Thanks for your help.

I don't do these very often, but I liked this one. This is a meme about books that I have read and how they have affected me. puffbird tagged me for this one, but I will leave it up to others if they want to do this. I was running a book club for a while, but I have backed off of that for various reasons, including simply getting out of the habit. I keep thinking about starting it up again, but I still don't have the motivation. Enjoy!

1. One book that changed your life:
Like many people, I first thought of the scriptures. Moral guidance can always change a life, whether from a book or a teacher.

After that, I thought of The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. This book taught me that classics can be fun to read when they are not read for school. They tend to be well written and have great stories. I switched from reading primarily fantasy and science fiction to reading classics after reading the abridged version (450 pages). I later read the unabridged version and started reading modern fiction as well. The change has really affected what books I read as well as what movies I watch.

2. One book you've read more than once:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Terrible movie, but quite a funny book when in the mood. I still enjoy reading this occasionally, even though the writing is not of the highest quality.

3. One book you would want on a desert island:
I have to pick the scriptures for this one. Simply because of what can be learned after multiple readings. Nothing else comes close.

4. One book that made you laugh:
How to Be a Villain: Evil Laughs, Secret Lairs, Master Plans, and More!!! by Neil Zawacki and illustrated by James Dignan. This was hilarious. I loved the whole thing. I received it as a gift from puffbird, and it is currently loaned to riverbeas.

5. One book that made you cry:
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and Donna Diamond. I have no desire to see the movie because I got so mad at the book growing up. It made me cry, and I was a tough boy! That was just mean. But it is a great book.

6. One book you wish had been written:
I don't have the patience to write a book, so it is difficult to pick a book I wish I had written. I think I will go with the Harry Potter series since J.K Rawlings made Forbes list of billionaires this year. That would be nice.

7. One book you wish had never been written:
Books are generally good for people, even if they are poorly written. A few, however, have inspired hatred and taken on a life of their own. One of the few that I wish had never been written is Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

8. One book you are currently reading:
Does a collection of essays count? I am currently reading Years of Minutes by Andy Rooney. It is a collection of his essays that have been done on 60 Minutes over 25 years of the show. I always enjoyed his work, and reading many of his essays in a row gives a little of a sense of history of the past 25 years. It has been quite interesting.

Before that, I finished Robinson Crusoe By Daniel Defoe. This is my most recent classic that I had never read. As usual, it was quite good.

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. I keep meaning to read this, but it keeps getting put off because I have to get it from the central stacks of our local library. It is much easier to grab one that is already at the branch.

Klixi has been asking for shelves for quite a while. We have a large closet in our basement that is roughly 11 feet wide, and we have had temporary shelves in their for the last year. We kept meaning to build shelves, but we kept having to put it off for financial reasons. Last weekend, we finally built them, and they are great.

We got aspen (soft wood) for the shelves, and put in supports to prevent bowing. One section is 6 feet wide, and the second section is 54 inches. The main storage space (6 feet wide) has four shelves, mostly 16 inches apart, and a total height of 6 feet. The other side only has two shelves: one at the top and the other 16 inches lower. This allows us to store larger items on the bottom of that side.

The project itself took most of the day, and clean-up was mostly completed by 6 on Saturday. The final clean-up is finishing this week as we are rehanging the doors so they are easier to open, which means we have to sand about half an inch off of two sliding doors.

We have moved two major things into the closet. First, the game collection takes up the majority of the main storage space. This was the primary reason to put in the shelves. We were able to pull some games out of storage, and we can limit the stacking of games to 4-5 high rather than 7-8 in the previous system. This will be much better. We will be able to see all of our games that get any real play time (more than once a year), and we will not simply forget about the ones in storage.

Second, we moved our food storage into the closet. This filled the shelves of the second portion and some of the other left-over space. We currently have about 6 months of food storage in case of emergencies.

Overall, the project was a huge success, and having the new shelves is great!

Today is Hiss's birthday. Birthdays are her favorite holiday, whether they are her own or someone else's. The best part about birthdays is, of course, the cake. Someone makes a fancy cake, puts candles on it, then lights it on fire, all while everyone in the room is singing joyfully (and hopefully very out of tune). This will always get Hiss excited.

She has been excited about her birthday since Klixi had hers in September. For the last four months we have heard every few days that her birthday was coming up soon, and we have had to cruelly dash her hopes multiple times. We eventually told her that she had to wait until after Christmas, a crushing blow. We have just let her be excited for the last month. Now that it is here, she woke up early to have a great start to the day. They were going to go to the park this morning, and I haven't heard from them since then. I am about to leave so we can have an early dinner and go swimming.

Happy Birthday, Hiss! Now that she is three, will she act all grown up r just enjoy being a kid? Only time will tell.