vintage mau's moments: the curse of the 5 o'clock dinner

Yeah, the water damage is pretty bad on this one, especially up at the top left.  Also see how charming it was that I was writing for the school paper so I couldn't write any curse words?  Not like now, with my blog empire, where I live like a king!  A damn hell ass king!

I remember very little about the food in the dining hall at college, only that there was this one entree, some kind of grilled chicken filet called "Chix Breast."  And I always thought that was weird, especially since we were at a women's college.

As the author of the book, I get a few free copies of course (though not unlimited free copies, as some people think--it's not like printing your own currency), but I did order a copy off of my go-to electronic retailer just to see how fast and when the book would arrive when it finally came out.  The official publication date is May 11th, so you can imagine I was a little surprised when I came home and found this at my front door yesterday.

Behold, the power of free two-day shipping!  Still, that was really quick.  Probably some of you guys who pre-ordered got your copies yesterday too, or maybe you will today.  Gleep!  We've gone live!

So a few small things:

1.) I'm told that since they're out in circulation now, copies of the book may actually start to appear in physical bookstores around the country any day now.  Atlanta is terrible with bookstores (really it seems like there are hardly any, except for a handful of scattered Borders, many of which are closing down) so I haven't had a chance to check this out for myself, but if you happen to be at a bookstore and see a copy of my book sitting there, could you please take a picture and e-mail it to me?  Get in the picture too, if you like!  Do something dorky, like give a thumbs up and point to the book.  Also, maybe do some winking!  I LOVE DORKY STUFF.  (Obviously.)

2.) Take a picture of you with the book in an interesting place and e-mail it to me.  Summer's coming up, and summer means travel.  Might you bring a copy of the book with you to read on the plane, and then pose with it at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, or at the lip of the Grand Canyon?  You just might!  E-mail your picture to me!  (You can pose with your e-reader too, I know many many people got the e-reader version as well.)  Or take it to work, and take a picture of my book in various and amusing hospital settings.  Like, I don't know, sitting in a bedpan.  (Wait--not that.)

3.) If you read the book and liked it, why not write a review?  The book is on goodreads.com, and of course you can review it on the site of your friendly neighborhood online book retailer.  As someone who has been writing on the internet since caveman days, I realize that open and anonymous reviews of this type can sometimes be an open invitation to Random Angries to just write one star reviews which read, in their entirety, "THIS IS BULLSHIT," but it's a free country, I guess.  However, do please consider writing a review if you enjoyed the book.

4.) EVENTS!  I am getting all mixed up with the time and the dates of the events, so I'm just going to put a quick crib sheet here, so that people in those cities can get their schedules straight and come hang out.  If there's enough interest, I will plan after-events (the after-event at Iowa City was surprisingly well-attended and delightful besides) and then we can hang out some more.  Full details of the events are listed here and here, but here's the quick and dirty guide.

Wednesday, May 11th, 6:00pm: NYC (Note the time!  I think I've been saying that it's at 7:00pm, but really the event is starting at 6:00pm. So we have time to eat dinner after!)

Friday, May 13th, 6:00pm: Philly 

Monday, May 16th, 7:00pm: Boston (well, Cambridge, really) 

Thurdsay, May 19th, 7:00pm: Atlanta

I really hope you guys in the area can make it.  It's been many, many years of keeping this blog, and it would be lovely to finally put some faces to the names in the comments section, or to see old friends.

Happy reading!

vintage mau's moments: some scary things about parent-family weekend

The main good think about Parent-Family Weekend was that the food was better, and miraculously, the weather was always pretty good.  That's...that's about it.  There were also a lot of weird men-folk wandering around campus (fathers, grandfathers, brothers) and in the dorms, which was kind of jarring.  I don't know what it was like for everyone else, but for me, after about a week at Wellesley, I kind of forgot I was at a women's college.  That is, until something co-ed happened, and I had to figure out why it was so weird to see someone who was 6 foot 2 with a beard walking around.  The elusive Sasquatch!

vintage mau's moments: expecting important mail?

OK, this one got a little chopped off at edges, but look, my scanner is not very good.  I drew this comic early February of my senior year of college, basically while I was camped out by the mailboxes waiting to hear from Columbia if I had been accepted to their med school.  The day after, I got my acceptance letter.  Did my comic will it to happen?  If you print out this comic and paste it on your fridge, will good things happen to you?  Who can say?  (The answer is yes.)

This comic was not printed in "Chairman Mau's Little Red Book," (I drew it after the book was printed) so unless you are the kind of hoarder that saves old issues of The Wellesley News, you probably haven't read it before, or at least you might not remember you did. It was twelve years ago! 1999! All I really remember from that year was "Living la Vida Loca" playing in some endless loop over unseen speakers. Also, remember in the late 90's, when people straight out of college were, like, getting jobs at Merrill Lynch and stuff?  Also, see how I didn't know how to spell "Merrill Lynch"?  Now you know, all you people in the comments section who point out things that I spell wrong: College Me couldn't spell either!

Special note for international readers:

I have gotten several e-mails from a number of readers around the world who were wondering why certain international book retailer sites were listing that my book would not be available for shipping until August, when obviously, the book is coming out the second week of May.  I had my editor look into this  and she did confirm that, indeed, due to the vagaries of international book distribution, certain international retailers would not be making the book publicly available until August, three whole months after the publication date.

Not only is this a bummer (the book would be great summer reading, seems like a shame to have to wait until the end of the summer to actually get your hands on it), but it also makes international orders from these retailers ineligible for the groovy bookmark giveaway.  I WANT TO GIVE YOU THESE BOOKMARKS GUYS, but it's a very specific giveaway and the qualification does have to be a pre-ordered book to ship before or on May 11th.

I know there's no ideal solution, and everyone's best solution may be different, but I will just tell you what I know: if you want to get your book as soon as possible, please order from your choice of retailer from the list on the sidebar to the right or on this page here, be it Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, Powell's, or whatever.  As an added plus, I've been told that several of these online retailers will be shipping out the book up to a week early, if you pre-order now.  Which means you could be reading the book by the end of next week--certainly well before August.  This is what I know, and this is what I was able to find out, so hopefully this is helpful to some of the people who e-mailed me asking what the best way was for them to get their hands on a copy posthaste.

Thanks again for all your support guys, it means a lot.  I hope you love the book, and get to read it soon!

vintage mau's moments: the things I've done for laundry quarters

I'm not going to scan all the old comics, by the way, just because, like the uncollected works of Salinger, some lost works should stay lost.  (Translation: they are lame.)  But some of them hold up OK.

Here's one from the winter of my junior year.  People probably don't even use quarters for laundry in college anymore, do they?  They probably have swipe cards or just get their holographic robot butler to do the laundry for them.  It's the year 2011.  WE WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE ROBOT BUTLERS BY NOW.

(Again, apologies for the water damage along the edges.  You can click on the image for a larger version.)

vintage

So I'm working on answering these questions for my interview with Wellesley Magazine (look for it in the next issue, I guess? I don't actually know when it's going to run) when I suddenly remembered this comic strip I drew, back in March of 1998.

I apologize for the state of the image, but I just scanned it from the original, and the original, sadly, was water damaged many years ago from some flooding that we had in our apartment.  It's still basically legible though, and reading through this, and other comics from my tenure as the cartoonist at The Wellesley News (a position I held for three years, mainly because no one else wanted to do it), I was surprised to see that many of them held up pretty well.  I mean, some of them are very Wellesley-specific--some of the references I don't even get anymore, and I wrote them--but many, many of them could be comics about college life in general.

So!  Here's what we're going to do.  I'm going to scan some of the old comics.  And I will post them up here sequentially.  And you can read them.  You'll have to remember though, that I drew these a long time ago.  In March of 1998, when I drew this particular comic about pre-meds, I was nineteen years old.  Some of the comics are also a victim of their times, as my unfortunate and un-ironic use of the word "peeps" probably shows.  But they can be taken for what they are, which is vintage snapshots of me, doing what I still do today, in embryonic form.

I was much more prolific with my cartooning then--I had to do one new comic a week every week for the school year, and some of them were, admittedly, a little rushed.  But I never skipped a week, I never ran a repeat, and I never missed a deadline, even when I had pneumonia and the shingles back-to-back the winter of of my senior year.  That's an ISTJ for you.  (Sorry for referencing that personality test thing again, but really, if you ever wanted to know anything about me, read that link, it has me nailed down to a tee.)  By the way, in addition to this weekly comic strip, and I also had a weekly humor column in The Wellesley News--a form and style of writing which eventually begat this very blog, and then the book.  So thank you Wellesley, for getting me started.

Anyway, look here in the upcoming days for more comics from my old college strip, and try not laugh at me too much.  Or, laugh, but because you think the comics are funny, not because, I don't know, the idea of college me sitting alone in her room drawing comic strip after comic strip is just too dorky to tolerate.  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly!  And if you're still in Boston or thereabouts, maybe I'll see you May 16th, during my reading at The Coop.  Afterwards, we can wear our pajamas to the dining hall, make nachos in the microwave, and then talk about feelings.

from here to eternity

Hi all! Sorry no posts for a few days (though I have been posting to my Tumblr mini-blog, if you haven't checked that out yet). The conference at the University of Iowa went really well. As an ISTJ I am an introvert by nature, which is not to say that I'm not friendly (I am!) or not a nice person (I am, I am!) or that I don't like to meet new people (I can say without reservation that finally meeting some of my blog readers at the conference was the highlight of the trip), only that all that plus the travel tends to makes me a little tired. So! Now it is Monday! And I woke up extra-super early to try and get some work done before going to actual work at the hospital. So let's get to it, shall we?

IOWA! I WAS INSIDE OF YOU!

Let me say first that I have never been as unprepared for a trip as I was for this one.  It went literally like this.  I packed half an hour before the cab came to pick me up.  I got into the cab, which took me to a train, which took me to another train, which took me to a plane, which took me to another plane.  Which I almost missed because after we landed in O'Hare (early, mind you) we were parked on the runway, unable to taxi into the gate for, like, half an hour.  Once we finally pulled in, I had nine minutes to get to my connecting flight, which was at the opposite end of another terminal, across the length of the entire airport.  Feets, don't fail me now!

Luckily there was a series of moving walkway connecting the two terminals, all lit up with crazy '80s roller derby neon, which you could probably see better above if I wasn't running all crazy holding two bags.  Action!

The good thing is I made it to the gate with exactly 30 seconds to spare.  The bad thing is the flight was then delayed for another hour and a half.  So...yay?

Anyway, I made it to Iowa City, took an $80 cab from the airport (YES, I KNOW, I should have called ahead for a cab with a flat fare instead of just letting the meter run, but at that point I was just like GET ME TO WHERE THE BED IS) and checked into the Hotel Vetro, which was recommended to me by blog reader Susan and which I now also highly recommend.  Because of its bed and its bed-affiliated paraphernalia, mainly.  Also: BED.  (I was tired.)

The next day I attended a book fair, gave a talk about work-life balance in medicine, did a short reading of my book at Prairie Lights, and then attended a meet-up at the very excellent Sanctuary Pub and Restaurant in downtown Iowa City.  It was a very busy day, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

See how I have lollipops set up at my book fair stall, like some kind of cartoon witch, to lure children into my shiny book trap?  Also, see to the left: BOOKMARKS.  (Aside to everyone who pre-ordered and gave me their addresses for the bookmarks: thank you!  There are, like, hundreds of you, so sorry that I can't e-mail you all back individually, but rest assured that I will be putting your bookmarks in the mail on Wednesday, May 11th.  The bookmark promotion is a limited-time offer just for pre-orders, of course, else I would bankrupt myself with postage, so if you want one, and you should, please pre-order and then e-mail me!  I don't need a receipt or anything, just don't be a lie-face.  Also, yes, if you pre-order more than one, I will send you multiples.  SO GET ON THAT.)

Like I said, meeting my blog readers was definitely the highlight of the trip.  Since I don't run this site like a business, I don't have a great sense of who is reading or how many people read, but meeting so many readers, in Iowa City no less (not to say that Iowa is, like, the North Pole, but it's a little far-flung for lots of people) was amazing.  Please especially note above my new Super-Friend Amy, who drove four hours just to hang out with us at Sanctuary.  Such nice people in the Midwest!

The reading at Prairie Lights was also a blast.  My first reading!  It would have been a bad time for me to reveal at this moment that I NEVER LEARNED TO READ, like Jordan Catalano, or Marlon Brando in "Viva Zapata!" but luckily, I can read a little bit.  This is also the first time I ever done anything remotely artsy like this, so I wasn't sure what to expect (perhaps an audience full of berets, macrame-ed vests and bongo drums incanting, "How now, brown bureaucrat."  Yes, a truly arcane Simpsons reference, how typical of me.)  But it went really well, I thought, and I think people were amused and piqued and all that.  Plus, now at least I have a crowd-tried excerpt to read for future events, speaking of which:

BOSTONIANS AND PERI-BOSTONIANS! You guys helped me make this book event happen!  Join me at the Harvard Coop on Monday, May 16th at 7:00pm.  I know it's not at Wellesley itself, but I do happen to know a certain shuttle bus that runs straight into Cambridge and will drop you off in front of the Coop basically the second that finals period ends.  What could be finer or more convenient?  NOTHING. As always, check the EVENTS page for more information and updates about after-event meet-ups.  Will there be more vaguely booze-laced events to make me feel slightly queasy the following morning?  ONLY TIME WILL TELL.  (But come on--it's Boston.  What else are we going to do?  Walk the Freedom Trail?)

Despite the revels the night before, we had a nice turnout for our panel talk early Saturday morning, which was about blogging and medicine.  Above is Rob, aka Dr. Rob, holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, and the crowd not looking the least bit hung over.  (Full disclosure: I was a tiny bit hung over, but that's probably because I wasn't sure that the Iowa City tap water was potable.  Turns out it is!  Good to know for next time!)

And then it was time to go home.

Mainly, I needed to get home so I could hide sixteen frillion plastic eggs with Snickers in them in our yard the following morning, in order that my kids could find them and demand that I hide them again.  So we did that for a while, which was OK, because I missed them like stink when I was gone. Which begs the question: what is stink? And do we say in the OR that something "bleeds like stink"? I don't know, but such are the enduring mysteries of language, and at any rate, I missed my kids a lot.

Cal looks like he belongs in a "Twilight" movie in this next one, because for some reason the light that morning made our back yard look like the Pacific Northwest, and him vampiric:





As a wonderful capper to our weekend we had guests over for dinner, which brings me to my first brush with Internet Super Fame.



Holy shit, guys, KEVIN MD was at my house!  And he is the nicest!  And I, apparently, am very short!  The best part, though, is that Kevin brought his lovely wife and kids, who are the exact same age as Cal and Mack, and they all had so much fun together that when they had to go back to their hotel, Cal cried.  And then he pretended not to be crying, which is extra-adorable.  In fact, I'd say nothing is cuter than that, except maybe two bunnies sitting in a teacup together.  And also the bunnies are hugging.

Then everyone slept for many hours and now it's Monday.  Again.  Which is somewhat less cute.

Anyway, hope you had a good weekend too. and thanks again to everyone in Iowa for making me feel so welcome. You guys were the best, and I hope to see you again soon.

I'm not above giveaways

Look, I know that doing too much book promotion is going to make certain people want to punch me in the nuts, but look, that's just what's going on in my life right now.  I wish I had other bigger things to do or to think about but I don't.  Right now, IT'S JUST THIS.  It's a culmination of three and a half years of work and I am starting to see why being a publicist is a full-time job because oh my lord, all this stuff is time-consuming.

One small thing.  This is a good thing.  IT'S A PRESENT FOR YOU.  You know how I printed out these little bookmarks?  Seriously, they are adorable.  I want to shuffle them and smell them and build a little card house with them.  They are mini, but they are super cute, guys.  And I want to give them to you.  So how about this.  If you pre-order the book before May 11th, e-mail me, and give me your address.  On the publication date, I will mail you a personal note and a mini bookmark.  Tell me if you want a monkey one or a retro design one.  They are both super cute, I can't decide.  Include in your e-mail if you pre-ordered a print copy or an e-book copy.  I don't care, I just am curious what the breakdown is.  This is only for pre-orders, so if you're planning on buying the book but were waiting around for some reason until after it came out: don't.  Pre-order it, then e-mail me, I will send you a bookmark and a note.  Also, LOVE.

Why do I care about pre-ordering versus regular ordering?  It's all the same, right?  Someone's buying the book either way?  Well, I'm told that pre-orders figure into first week sales, and sometimes it's not so much the total number of sales as much as the velocity of sales (PHYSICS) that gains attention, creates momentum, and is the measure of whether or not the book is a success.  The first week is critically important.  So please, please, please, if you're going to buy the book anyway, do pre-order it.  Don't make me grovel, people, it's unseemly.

(Don't get me wrong, I will grovel, though.)

And now I will stop!  Because it's at this point (and I've seen it on other blogs too when the bloggers have books or projects coming out) that people start to groan that the blog has just turned into a self-promotion platform.  But seriously guys, think about it: could you really expect me not to talk about it?  If I didn't talk about it, it would actually be super-weird.  If I didn't want something I worked on so hard to do well, IT WOULD BE SUPER SUPER WEIRD.  Thank you.  Don't be mad.

Oh shit, I have to pack, my cab is picking me up in half an hour.  See you tonight, Iowa City!

on doctoring, mothering, and writing about both

Bookreporter.com asked me to write a brief piece as part of their lead-up to Mother's Day (yes, it's a long lead-up, I know) about doctoring, mothering, and my inspiration to write.  I would have preferred to use the term "parenting" in the article, since my belief is that after the kid is actually born and weaned, ideally the the effort and act of fathering and mothering a child should be roughly equivalent.  However, it was for Mother's Day, so I was somewhat limited in my word choice.  But anyway, go read it over here.  I wrote it post-call at 2:00am, which, as you know, is when all the magic creativity fairies come out.  Or at least that explains why I start hallucinating them around that point.

I am flying out to Iowa City tomorrow evening, so make sure you're following my Tumblr mini mobile blog either from this page (check sidebar to the left) or at michelleau.tumblr.com to get all the breathless and thrilling details of my travels, like How I Crammed That Luggage Into The Overhead All By Myself (file under "Tiny Triumphs") or How I Missed My Family So Much For The Two Days I Was Gone That I Cried In The Airport Bathroom.  Oh, and also join me in the cliffhanger excitement of my 50 minute layover at O'Hare.  Will I make my connection to Cedar Rapids Municipal?  Will there be Corn Nuts at the newsstand?  ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

See you in Iowa!  And don't forget, meetup Friday night at Sanctuary!  It's OK if you can't make it to the reading at Prairie Lights beforehand, just drop by afterwards, say hi, hang out.  Just don't trick me to getting into your murder van like Jame Gumb and we'll get along just fine.

gleep!

I've been thinking about this book so much for the past three and a half years it seems almost inconceivable that I haven't actually had a real copy in my hands yet, but...you guys.  YOU GUYS.

I had to get a few advance copies to bring with me to Iowa. Aside from the reading, did I mention that I'm participating in a book fair there?  Oh, yeah, guess I forgot about that.  Uh... I'll be at a book fair!  Just like a real fair, but most likely no funnel cake or pony rides!  So really kind of a crappy fair overall!  (Just kidding.  It will be fun.  Go to the fair.  I will give out lollipops--totally serious.  Also I'm giving out these bookmarks, so hello, swag city, please stop by.)





The book looks good.  It feels good.  It looks good with the dust jacket, and it looks handsome without the dust jacket.  (This is important.  I don't like to read books with jackets on them, they are too slippery.)  It's all at once completely familiar and totally amazing.

And the inside looks good too.  I mean, I'm assuming.  I can't really read it through like a normal person--I put a moratorium on that a while ago because even after it went to the printer I kept picking through it and micro-editing it in my mind.  I'm a noodler and a perfectionist by nature, so probably I'll always feel like that.  But I do think there's one part I got just right.

Don't forget, people near Iowa City--meet up Friday night at Sanctuary Restaurant and Pub!  They are supposed to have really excellent beer, and I have already ordered the steamed cilantro mussels off the menu because I want to eat the messiest, most odiferous thing off the menu straight off.  That way, if you stick around, I know we'll be friends.  Come hang out after the reading at Prairie Lights, 8:30pm until whenever.

first we work, then we play

There was a point when I was taking call this weekend when I realized it had probably been about three years or so since I had been up doing cases straight through the entire night. I distinctly remember those nights on call as the "team captain," (my role was exactly what you'd imagine it to be--in a medical context, that is), and I was convinced that the page operator had some sort of bug on me, because literally the second I would either sit down or go to the bathroom (perhaps that was redundant) one of my many pagers would go off. Which reminds me of a story that one of my parters at work told me about one of his senior residents during training who nipped across the street to get something to eat while on call, and some little kid at the restaurant looking up at him in awe, informing him that he had on "more pagers than Master P." Kids!  Kids and their rap music!

Anyway, I will post something more substantial later, but for now, this: do you like beer? Do you like Iowa City? Do you like drinking beer in Iowa City?  Then join me, won't you, for a little meet-up at the Sanctuary Restaurant and Pub at 8:30pm this Friday night!  I will be heading there after my reading at the Prairie Lights Bookstore, which will take place somewhere between 6:00 and 8:00pm.  Come and hang out with me afterwards, or it will be very embarrassing, just me sitting alone in a pub.  Also, beer gives me hiccups, like some kind of cartoon wino.  So sit with me and witness the magic!

tumbling

Hi everyone! Hope you're having a nice weekend! My weekend has been...less nice. I'm on call nights (7:00pm-7:00am) this whole weekend, Friday Saturday and Sunday, and the first two nights I basically stayed up the whole time. Let's hope (ANTI-JINX MANEUVER) that my luck gets better, because I think a third night in a row of not sleeping would probably kill me. I know I did it during residency when I did those two weeks in a row of working the night shift in the ER, but I'm elderly now. I'm not like one of these mutants, I need sleep. (By the way, I cannot tell you how much I envy people who can run on a full tank of gas after getting only four or five hours of sleep a night? I mean, can you imagine? Four extra hours in your day? I'd be so productive! And then I'd lord it over everyone insufferably!)

Anyway, I know I seemingly haven't updated for a few days, but...hey, look at this! I have a mobile mini-blog for you to look at!

It's on Tumblr, don't you know. Which, hey, is a really nice platform! Why did I not know more about Tumblr before? I BLAME YOU, THE READERS. I've been on Blogger for the past, uh, eight years, so it's not so much that I love Blogger so much as the fact that I have intertia and more years of back archives both of my kids' ages combined. I've just got too much old material to move platforms without putting in some significant time and effort into the thing; I'm like the blogging equivalent of a hoarder. (Don't even look at the hideousness that is my Homestead archives, which basically encompasses my entire med school career--you can't unsee that kind of horror. Look, yellow text on a royal blue background seemed like a good idea at the time.  It was the year 2000!  Give me a break, we barely had electricity back then.)

Anyway, if you follow my Twitter stream you know that I tend to post a lot of pictures, and I began to wish I had a better mobile blogging platform that would act as a better clearinghouse for the photos, as well as give me a little more freedom than Twitter would allow.  I also know that I'm going to be doing a bit of traveling in the next few weeks, so I wanted a way to do blog updates even if I didn't have time to sit down and write a whole long thing.  Hence, Tumblr.  I modified one of their themes very slightly to suit my needs, and I also put a badge to the mobile mini-blog on the sidebar of this page (look over to the right--it shows that ten most recent entries) so you can click through from here.

Nerd alert!  It was actually very difficult to find a Tumblr badge for Blogger that worked, but I did find a bit of code from this guy over here (thanks Rob!) and modified it to fit into my sidebar.  My HTML knowledge is entirely rudimentary--for the most part, I can just change colors and sizes of things, though when it comes to actual design I am hopeless--but I thought if it might be helpful to anyone else, I'd post the code that I had here.    Right now I just have it that clicking on the badge will take you through to the Tumblr page itself--however, if anyone would know how to make it that I could click through each individual entry, that would be stellar.

The Tumblr feed code is on Rob's page, and here's the modification that I used to make it fit onto my sidebar.  It's basically the same as Rob's but I just changed the colors and the photo border thickness a little bit.  Anyway, don't ever say I didn't do nerd stuff for you.

.tumblr_photo
{
width: 125px;
height: auto;
float: right;
margin: 3px;
padding: 0px;
border: 1px #444444 solid;
}
.tumblr_posts
{
float: left;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
margin-left: -10px;
}
.tumblr_post
{
font-size: x-small;
list-style-type: none;
width: 230px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
margin-top: 3px;
margin-bottom: 3px;
max-height:210px;
overflow: hidden;
border: thin white outset;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
old-background-color:#78a;
}
.tumblr_caption
{
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}


So! Tumblr! Check it out! This does not mean I'm abandoning this page at all, by the way--I'm not. I'm still going to update here at the mothership like usual, but now I have a place for all the little bits and pictures and links that don't quite make up a full blog entry. Like that junk drawer that's in everyone kitchen with all the extra twist ties, half-dead batteries, orphaned Lego pieces, and sweaty handfuls of linty change.

Internets! I has them!

northeast regional

OK, business first.  First off, we are confirmed, full event info for the New York event is listed here (scroll down, events are listed chronologically). I can't wait to meet up with you all!

Secondly, since I will flying up to New York in May anyway, I wanted to see if there is any interest in doing an event in a nearby big city before I fly all the way back home to Atlanta.  The two cities I was thinking about were Boston (because I went to college around there), and Washington DC (because that's where everyone from college went afterwards, unless they were moving to New York, San Francisco, or staying in Boston--which, if Hollywood is to believed, is where all the good, hardworking blue collar people with dark secrets and comically broad accents are).

If you will humor me with another poll, I will decide whether to stop at one or the other, or neither.  It's not a huge deal for me, as like I mentioned before I have no lofty expectations (nor desire, to be totally honest) for anything approaching a traditional book tour of the 20 cities in 20 days variety.  But I'm probably going to bring Cal to New York to see my parents anyway, and I know that he would get a kick out of a short trip to either of the two cities I mentioned above (though, admittedly, the thing he would enjoy most would likely be the fact that I'd let him play with my iPad on the train).  I do love both cities, and haven't visited either in a while, so if there's something book-related to do there aside from seeing the Air and Space Museum or walking around Lake Waban thrice (yes, my son and I are GETTING MARRIED, what of it?) maybe it could be worth pulling him out of kindergarten for an extra day or two.  Ergo, Boston or DC locals:






OK, thanks for helping me gauge interest! Like I said, no big deal, but I'm flying to New York that week anyway, so while I'm up there, perhaps a side trip can be justified, or at least somewhat amusing.  Thanks again for helping me figure it out.

Honestly, the fact that I have a book coming out in...what, really? twenty six days--is and continues to be completely bizarre for me, mostly because it's so separate from what I do day to day in my regular life. (Between being a doctor and having two little kids, sometimes I feel as though my life is just a continuous loop of giving and receiving occasionally sketchy signout about a series of people for which I am ultimately responsible.)

But writing and publishing and promoting a book, even if the book is indeed about being a doctor and having young kids--that's different, and to be honest, the different is exactly what makes it great for me.  It's a departure from my everyday life, and doing something completely novel, when you're in the mood and ready for a ride, is fun.  I want the book to do well, by whatever measures are pertinent, and of course I hope that people will enjoy reading it.  But this is the thing that I think about above all is that regardless of what happens, this experience, and the opportunity to go through it all, has been and will be a blast.

live, from new york

Inexact science though it may have been, there clearly was enough interest in and around New York City to justify a book event there in May.  So we're on!  It will be held at the Columbia University bookstore on the Morningside Campus (or, as we used to call it in med school, "The Undergrad Campus," though every single other grad school of the university was on that same campus but us, the red-headed stepchild in Washington Heights) on Wednesday, May 11th.  WEDNSEDAY MAY 11th.  Burn it into your brain!  Or, you know, just remember it the normal way!

More details to follow, including the time of the event (I still have to find out the fine details myself), but I'm presuming it will be in the evening.  And perhaps afterward, if we're feeling good, we will all nip out to Coronet Pizza, the pizza that only tastes good when you're drunk (TM).

On a somewhat related topic, I have am taking the week of the book publication and the week afterwards as vacation time off work, in order to avail myself to do any and all publicity-type stuff related to bookery.  However, the more I read and learn about it, the more I realize that actual physical travel may only play a very small role in all this.  I'm doing book events in Atlanta (because I live here) and New York (because I lived there before I lived here, and also, I can stay at my parents house, which is FREE), but from all my research on the topic, actual physical appearances do very little to sell books, especially when you take the time and expense of the travel into account.  Also, to be honest, I am pretty busy at work and I have two little kids--if I'm leaving town for any reason, I have to maximize efficiency--for example, when I'm in Iowa City next weekend I have two talks, a book reading, and (hopefully) a reader meet-up scheduled for the two days I'll be there.  If I was younger or less encumbered, the idea of traveling for the sake of traveling might kind of fun (I distinctly remember relishing the seemingly jet-set adventure involved with med school interviews the first two or three times around--after that it just got very tiresome) but to be honest, I need to have a really compelling reason to leave my kids and go somewhere these days.  Actually, this trip to Iowa City is the first time I've traveled without either kid, ever.  I may weep.

I'm not saying that I don't want to travel for the book, of course.  I am completely committed, and as such, I will do whatever the occasion requires me to to.  DO YOU WANT ME TO BE ON YOUR SHOW, ELLEN DEGENERES?  I WILL TOTALLY BE ON YOUR SHOW BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND YOUR BLAZERS AND ALSO YOU ARE ADORABLE.  (You too, Meredith Viera.)  But I am also acutely aware that the publishing industry is changing (this is just what I hear--changing relative to what I have no idea because I know nothing about publishing but I'm told it is in the middle of an evolution, like in the pre-Cambrian seas) and that a lot of book publicity now takes on the form of "virtual" book tours, where authors are interviewed or guest post or are somehow featured on various like-minded blogs around the internet.  And then we all put on goggled helmets and tactile-sense gloves and go around and shoot aliens with our space lasers!  (Oh wait, that's "virtual reality.")

Anyway, my point is, do join me in New York if you're in the area and not too busy (ooh!  I made these super cute little bookmarks that I'm going to give out!  Remind me to show you later, they are the greatest) but if you can't, why not help me with my virtual book tour?  Do you have a website that seems like we might have a like-minded readership?  It doesn't have to be medical, I read lots of news, academic, craft, photography, design, food, and parenting websites too.  I can come visit your blog!  Do you want to review my book?  Chat with me?  Have me do a guest post?  These are things I can do, and there are presents I can get you!  E-mail me, or contact my publicist!  And, by the way, if you're close personal friends with Ira Glass, tell him that if he could feature this excerpt as part of a cold open for "This American Life," I would die of happiness.  The theme of the show could be, "Places I Never Thought I'd Be," and the rest of the show could be about, you know, the war in Iraq or whatever.

*          *          *

Special coupon section!

This will only apply to people who live in or around Atlanta, so if you don't live near here, don't bother to read this next part.

OK, are they all gone?  Great.  Let's talk mosquitoes again.  Regarding the last entry, Chuck wanted to offer any readers of this blog a special discount if they are interested in getting a mosquito system installed for their homes.  The discount will entitle you to one free refill of mosquito spray stuff free--a $200 value.  (The bucket of the stuff is 50 gallons, I think ours is supposed to last three months before it needs to be refilled.)  The coupon code is 7214H, so go ahead and give Chuck a call if you're interested, he does free evaluations of your home and whatnot, so there's not really that much to lose just to have him come by and give you advice.  Also, he looks a little like Alan Alda, though I'm sure that resemblance probably doesn't play as well down here as it might up north.

now if only I had some sort of pollen repelling system

The first thing I noticed when we first moved to Atlanta July of 2008--aside from the heat, oh lord the heat--was the fact that the mosquitoes here are insane. Seriously insane. First off, they are everywhere. Secondly, they are gigantic. I was used to those little spindly mosquitoes in New York, especially in the parks, but the mosquitoes in Atlanta seem easily twice as large, so large that you can actually see these black and white striped markings on them. You can feel them biting you, and it hurts.  Horrifying. Third, the mosquitoes in Atlanta (well, really probably anywhere where there are so many and therefore competition for sweet, sweet human blood is so high) is that they are incredibly aggressive. Our first home in Atlanta, you may remember, was a townhouse, so we didn't have a significant outdoor living space. But even there, just walking out to let Cooper pee before bedtime, I would easily get five mosquito bites just in the forty-five seconds I was actually outdoors. Like I said: ridiculous.

I am also unfortunately pretty allergic to mosquito bites. I mean allergic in the classic sense--the bites swell up enormously, they get huge and hard and itchy. Like if I got a bite on my forearm, I'd have to take my watch off, that's how swollen we're talking about here. Joe, for some reason, doesn't tend to get bitten by mosquitoes (I've been told that it's a blood type thing? Who knows, either way, he got lucky) but the kids seem to have inherited my predilection for being bitten. At our last home, which we were renting, we had a large, relatively flat backyard with a jungle gym for the kids, but unfortunately the yard was surrounded by brush and it was pretty damp a lot of the time, and as a result, there were so many mosquitoes out there that we couldn't even go outdoors until basically November, after which point it was too cold to go outdoors anyway.

At the old place, we had exterminators come and spray for mosquitoes once a month, which...sort of worked for the first week, but after that (or after it rained, whichever came first) there was an exponential decay of the protective coating created by the spray, and then the mosquitoes came back in full force. And, to be honest, I never really loved the idea of having people come spray our yard with stuff where the instructions explicitly stated that animals and kids should be kept out of the yard for a couple of hours afterwards. Because: ew.

Anyway, when we bought the new place and it became apparent that the backyard was going to be some kind of tropical wonderland, I told Joe that we needed to get a better system for mosquito control. Because we had a nice yard, and the fact of it was that neither I nor the kids would be able to enjoy it at all if we didn't have more stringent measures in place. I mean, not only is our yard like some kind of bug breeding haven, but we're flanked on either side by two shady, ivy-filled gulches. "That's where we'll hide the body," I told Joe during our second viewing of the house. (Whose body? Who can say? Therein lies the mystery.) But as was apparent from our previous house renting experience, it doesn't matter how much you spray--if your neighbors don't spray, or (as was in our case) you don't have neighbors, you're going to have mosquitoes all up in your stuff.

Being a city person, I had no idea what kinds of mosquito control methods would be effective. Those giant citronella Tiki torches everywhere? DEET baths? Surrounding my entire yard in a net? None of these solutions seemed strictly practical. Then a few months ago one of my co-workers recommended that we get some kind of built-in mosquito spraying system. (Hi, Sandra!) She had one put in her extremely mosquito-prone yard years ago, and she told me the difference was like night and day. We didn't consider it at the time because the house we were living at was a rental, but when we moved into this place, I got the number and called the guy for an estimate.

Here's the guy:

His name is Chuck, and as you can clearly see, he is adorable. He's also very nice, and went over the system with me in some detail. Anyway, what his bug system basically does is create a perimeter of protection around any outdoor area that you would like to keep bug free. The core of the system is a reservoir tank of pyrethrum (per the website, a low-toxicity insecticide/insect deterrent derived from flower oil) that mists lightly at regular intervals throughout the day--usually sunup, sundown, and 9:00pm--for 30 seconds each time. The spray is administered through a series of nozzles and tubing that are installed around the perimeter of the property you want to protect--Chuck also recommended interspersing a few nozzles in and around our ivy, since its so thick. So the system mists three times a day (there's also a remote control so that you can have it spray additionally if you want, say, right before you go outside or if you're having a party or something), and...that's it. Per Chuck, it just works. I was hesitant about having anything installed (I didn't want it to be too obtrusive and to ruin our yard), and I wasn't so sure if it would work or not, but everyone just raved about how effective it was (including, it should be noted, the actual traditional exterminator who came for his twice yearly maintenance termite/roach spraying), so after some discussion and some looking at our New House budget, Joe and I decided to get the mosquito system installed.

In terms of the aesthetics of the system--I have no complaints. Chuck said that it would be virtually invisible, and it basically is--all the pictures from my yard yesterday have elements of the bug spraying system in them, but you can't really seem them unless I point them out. The most visible parts, frankly, are the nozzles in the ivy and at the edge of some of the flower beds, and even those are pretty subtle--they just look like thin black pipes with a silver tip. Here's a picture of one in the ivy here (I posted this picture yesterday)--you can kind of see one at the bottom right, and one at the top left of the ivy mound.  Also, if you look at the middle of the tree in the center of the frame, you can see some tubing running up the trunk.  The rest of the apparatus you can barely see at all, mostly because our backyard is fully fenced in, and the fence provides both structure and cover for the tubing and nozzles.

Here's another picture of the system doing its sunset spray--this nozzle is near where we planted the tomatoes:

And well does it work?  Well, let me just say that I've been outside basically all weekend (we've had almost every meal outside since we got back, not to mention we were out in the garden planting all day Sunday), and I've gotten one mosquito bite--one--and that was from when we left the protective bubble of the house to go to the plant-buying place.  ONE.  I know that getting "just" one mosquito bite doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you live in Atlanta and you've been outdoors in the spring and summer (and fall) you know: IT IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL.  And let me tell you, it's just so nice to be able to have the kids running in and out of the house (as they do) without having to wrestle them down to rub insect repellent all over them throughout the day.  We had that "natural" kind that comes in a big chapstick-like thing, which made things a little easier to put on and less slimey, but--not really.

As so, did I mention that Chuck has a black lab mix that looks just like Cooper, only her name is Miss Skeeter?  Nothing is cuter than that, friends.  Nothing.  Except for maybe this jacket.

nature's own

Hey everyone! First off, thanks for participating in the head count from the last entry. It occurred to me after the fact that given the purpose of the poll, I probably should have just made the two choices "Yes" and "Yes," because obviously, if you live in Hawaii, you're not going to come to New York for a book event (nor would I--in fact, if I lived in Hawaii, I probably would never leave to go anywhere, ever).  But as an inexact headcount, the poll was more than adequate. Thank you all so much, and I hope (hope!) I will have an event to tell you about soon, at a nice venue in which to meet you all and thank you in person.

Oh, and I should address this one too: someone pointed out that Step I of the USMLE is usually taken around May or June. (I know it seems impossible to those of you entrenched in this process right now, but I actually can't remember in the slightest what month I took any of the three USMLEs, just like I couldn't remember what month Match Day was a few years after the fact. Believe me, once you pass them and place into a residency program, their significance in your mind will drop exponentially.)  Anyway, I'm not even talking about the possibility of this event in specific, I just wanted to say: it's OK to not study for a few hours once in a while. In fact, it's good for you.  So at least once a week, go out to dinner, see a movie, play frisbee in the park with some friends. Your poor, overstuffed brain will thank you for it later, I promise, even if you have to put off for another day memorizing the difference between the different types of MEN syndrome.

(For some reason, that's one fact that sticks with me, that before I took Step I I really thought that knowing the different types of MEN syndrome was going to make or break me.  I'm not really sure why I thought that, all I know is that I memorized the shit out of MEN syndromes and I never got asked about it on any standardized test, ever.)


* * *


One of the things that really drew us to our new house was the backyard. The people that lived here before us (and not doubt, the people before them) were obviously into gardening, and it really shows. It's not a big yard, and it's not a flat yard, but it's all planned and planted and, now that we're officially in the thick of Spring, incredibly lush. Joe and I live in fear that, now that the house is our responsibility, we're going to totally screw it up. TOO MUCH PRESSURE.

Most of the foliage is of the flowering, ornamental variety, and before we moved in we told the kids that once we got moved in, we'd plant something edible, because that's some good clean family fun right there.  So today, we made good on our promise, got a few things from the local plantatorium and shoved them into the ground.  Hopefully they will survive, because in the face of all this verdant growth, it's going to be really embarrassing if they don't.

We planted we little strawberry plants (shown in the first two pictures), two blueberry plants (above), and some tomatoes and peppers.  So anyway--we'll see!  My gardening experience is strictly limited to planter boxes on our balcony in New York, but those flowers didn't die (immediately), so I figure these plants here have an even better chance, because, you know, nature and stuff.

Despite the look of the pictures, our backyard is basically full sun for most of the day, so that's helpful for the photosynthesis and whatnot.  But if anyone has any more detailed advice on how to keep these plants in decent shape, I'd love to hear it.  Do we need to do something to keep woodland critters out and away from our imminently delicious edibles?  Oh, and if there's anything else that's reasonably easy to plant and maintain, let us know, and maybe we'll shove some of those in the ground too.  I mean, if we can find any room back there.  Or maybe we can reclaim some of the planting space from all that ivy, because it's getting a little out of control.

NYC book event this May: let's make it happen!

OK guys, sorry to bother you about this, and I've never run a poll on this site before so forgive me if I'm not doing it right, but the thing is this: we would like to do a book event in New York around the time that the book comes out on May 11th. I grew up in New York, went to med school and did one and two-thirds of a residency in New York, the book is set in New York, everyone I know is in New York--it makes sense.

But I have no idea how many people would actually, physically show up to a New York event if we did plan one, and I'm sure that my publisher would want to make sure we'd have a reasonable showing before deciding whether or not to have an event at all.

I don't mind telling you that I really, really want this event to happen. First of all, my parents would be able to attend, and they would be proud. Second of all, so I would get to finally meet many of you--I know that a good number of people are based in or around New York. So, see: the poll.




This is not a poll so much as a headcount, I guess. It's not final or binding obviously, I don't know who's voting though I do get a breakdown of what state you're voting from, because, you know, something something IP addresses. Also, if you can't be there, don't bother to click "no" (after all, not everyone will be in the NY/NJ/CT/PA area in May, so it's entirely expected that most of my readers actually won't be able to come)--what I'm really interested in is how many "yes" votes there are. So please, please, if you think you'd like to hang out with me at a book event in New York in May (again, my goal is around the second weekend in May, since the book comes out May 11th), go to the poll either above or at the top of the sidebar on the right and click "yes." I will try as much as I have power over such things to make it an event that's in the evening, towards the end of the week, so as to work with people's busy schedules. But before any event can be planned at all, my publisher needs to know that there is interest, and that it'll be worth their while.

So please vote! Tell your friends who also want to come to vote! I mean, vote with numbers grounded in reality, don't just click "yes" a thousand times, but do click it multiply if you're indicating the number of people that you might bring along to such an event, like, say, you and your twenty highly literate best friends. Thanks so much, and with any luck (and your help) I'll see you in May in New York!

but I guess that's what photoshop is for

These are the last vacation pictures I'm going to post, I promise, because I'm pretty sure there's no faster way to get people to want to punch you in the mouth than forcing them to look at your vacation pictures.  Probably the only thing worse than that is coercing people to read the manuscript of the book you're writing--believe it or not, I didn't even ask Joe to read my book until I got the galleys, and he's contractually obligated to do whatever I say.

Anyway, we were on vacation, and we thought it might be nice to get a family photo.  That's not too much to ask, is it?  We were all standing around on the beach already and it was the golden hour (which makes everyone look attractive), so it seemed like as good a time as any.  So we got Joe's mom to hold our camera, wrestled the two kids into our lap, and gritted our teeth together rasping "happy family happy family happy family" under our breaths.  Click.

JOE: I always have a good photo face!

MICHELLE: While I will use my standard "not quite smiling but pleasant" photo face!  And maybe if I tickle Mack, he will smile!

MACK: NO.

CAL: And I will grab Dad's balls!

JOE: Not only do I always have a good photo face, I can maintain the same face for a long time!

MICHELLE: Dammit, now Mack is trying to get away.  Let me pull him close to me to create a simulacrum of filial devotion.

MACK: GRAA, T. REX EAT MACK HAND.

CAL: Never has anyone ever sat more awkwardly in a lap than I am sitting in Dad's lap right now.  But never mind.  Blue Steel!  Magnum!  El Tigre!

JOE: See?  I'm still doing it!  My face, it does not move!  Ever!

MACK: GRAARAAAH!  T. REX EAT HAND EAT ROCK EAT STICKS T. REX EAT IT.

CAL: I tire of this.  The energy of this shoot is all wrong.

JOE: In fact, I might be a wax statue, for all you can tell!

MACK: BUGS! BUGS FLY ON MACK!  NO LIKE THAT!  BUGS!

JOE: The truth is, I died an hour ago, and nobody noticed!  It's called rigor mortis, bitches!

MACK: BUGS ON NECK NOW! BUGS!  NO LIKE BUGS ON NECK! T. REX EAT!

MICHELLE: (Eyeing possible escape routes.)