Network

I began with a new patient today and, without going into too much detail and breaching confidentiality, they admitted to me that two previous "doctors" had placed them on ten different psychotropic medications. Some of them experimental. None of them effective. They came to me because, after two years, they're frightened. They've been taking some potentially dangerous and totally unnecessary risks. Now, while I won't tell you what the patient suffers from, I will say that it falls into the category of life experiences, things we all go through. Not psychosis. And their story is one I hear every day, although the thought of ten medications in two years is a particularly disturbing thought.

This person wanted to be well, but in some ways they wanted to be ill even more. They needed an explanation for not being able to cope. They were afraid of the pain, like all of us.

If I do nothing else with my life, I want to teach the few people the universe puts in my path that there is value in suffering. Personally, I've always found it very empowering.

My favourite. Nevermind that I can't drive. It belonged to my uncle.

A 1969 Lotus Elan S4, pictured ( here )

Award for whoever returns it. I'd rather not say how much here.

Oh, California LUCKY14.

I know it's Monday, I know it's lovely weather, and I know you're only a few minutes drive away from the beach, but it's not Spring Break yet. You've got mid-terms before that, and so showing up to class in your bathing suits is just... really, it's not conducive to focused learning, I'm sorry to say.

On a personal note, I don't know if I'm doing anything for the break, myself... I still have and a friend's proposal to edit, and an article on the Isla del Sol Chicana ruins to finish, and if I don't finish a draft this week, I'll never finish grading anyone's midterms. I'd like a vacation, but. Well, "my office with no students running around screaming about kegs" is really quite like a vacation. And, besides, I don't think I could wear a bikini comfortably around town quite the way the girls on the quad tanning are doing. Maybe it's better I stay and work.

Its been quite a busy day so far. I drew an early morning shift at the hospital. Had a boy come in missing an ear, the poor thing. It seemed to be some sort of animal attack. I'd rather have the weirder ones, than a child. But we got him fixed up and he's resting comfortably right now.

There's been the usual as well. Shootings, stabbings, a car accident, strange objects in the anus. I look forward to a nice slow day of people with head colds at the practice. I sometimes wonder if I take on too much. But I want to help at the hospital, and I like the pace of the practice. They sort of balance each other out. But I'm afraid I'll need to cut something down. Its a matter of what means the least to me.

In unrelated news I finally got a look at the lovely robot warp_speed is building me. I know it seems silly, but I love it. I can't wait for the competition.

I had a good weekend. Made a couple friends, wrecked a bar. Got dumped. Or maybe I dumped her. It was sort of a mutual thing. With flying objects and broken glass. I've had better breakups. parking_brake of all people invited me into coffee. And then we went to a bar.

Its this place called Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It looks like someone put up some wood and opened a bar inside and then vomited all over the floor, but the whiskey is top notch and the bartender has a working flintlock.

So I was having a drinking contest with this Scottish dude and losing miserably, and I had the most perfect idea.

There was this big guy. Lets call him cupcake. Well cupcake has a mean right hook. Next thing you know, parking_brake was going all Jackie Chan on everyone, warp_speed was hitting things with abandon, and there were flying midgets.

This bar..this bar is best bar.

Has hot waitresses too!

The other day was uncomfortable. My ghost wasn't really a ghost. That's always a shock, I'm used to the ghosts. Its the corpses I can't handle.

theknghtherself kept the demons at bay. I might have hurt myself if I'd made the realization alone. It wasn't that there was a murder in my flat, its that I found the body. I still don't fully remember it.

Aveline was quite nice, even if she has almost red hair. Have I mentioned? I rather dislike the color red. She tosses and turns when she sleep. I wonder if she has her own demons.