Oh, and flowers!

Early in the morning on Valentine's day, I leaped out of bed to discover that my alarm hadn't gone off and that I was supposed to in the car driving to an 8 am class at that very moment.

Some reflex arc allowed me to assemble underwear, socks, jeans, wooly top in the appropriate order on my body, and I was saying a quick goodbye to John when he suggested I look in the kitchen by the coffee maker.

I went out to the kitchen and thus commenced much squealing and cooing and other noises I don't usually make. A dozen of the most beautiful long-stemmed roses I have ever seen, and the only ones I have ever received.

As much as I eschew Valentine's Day as a Hallmark holiday, I was utterly floored and moved, and floated through the day hoping someone would ask me what I got for Valentine's Day.

Could John be the classiest human being alive? Very possibly.

(More photos by this classy fellow.)

To a Magnificent Meniscus

This is the view from a tiny camera inside my mom's knee. She tore her meniscus -- the padding between her femur (upper leg bone) and her tibia (lower leg bone) -- a while back, and you better believe it hurt like heck.

She's been pretty much immobilized since winter break, when I got to go bug the orthopedist with her. We looked at some MRIs, twisted her knee around a bit and said, yep, that's a torn meniscus.

So props to her for sticking it out through a six-week wait for surgery, and more props to my dad for running around the house getting things for her.

What you're looking at is a lovely, smoothed out meniscus, with all the nasty frayed parts clipped away. She should be up and climbing stairs in a few weeks!

So yay Mom, yay Dad, and yay technology for making teeny tiny cameras and teeny tiny scissors.

New Header

I used PhotoShop and an itty bit of HTML tonight. It felt good. That photo is looking up at the westbound flight path to LAX, as seen from a Lennox elementary school playground. I was there for a health fair about a year ago, and how many cases of asthma did I see? Not pictured: High-voltage power lines stretching up and down the street as far as I could see. I'm sure I'm on some watch list, given how many pictures of power lines and airplanes I snapped that day. But it was just so unbelievable -- huge jets passing overhead every few minutes and the incessant buzz of electricity running through thick cables.

The Surly Bonds of Fact-Checking

It's 4 a.m. and I'm listening the NPR, reminded by "The Writer's Almanac" that today (Monday, January 28) is the day in 1986 that the Challenger space shuttle crashed.

I remember exactly where I was sitting in my fourth grade class, when a runner from the main office came and whispered in the teacher's ear. Shortly after, a television was wheeled into the room so that we could watch the news. We watched as the coverage unfolded, as footage of the explosion played over and over. I was reminded of the experience as I sat, glued to my television, on September 11th, 2001.

But to the main point of this post. Garrision Keillor incorrectly credited Ronald Reagan with a quote from an aviator-poet of the Royal Canadian Air Force. As soon as he read the famous words, my fact checker mojo turned on. Not one to give Reagan a lot of credit, especially not for elegant prose, I looked up the original source.

Slipped the surly bonds of Earth ... and touched the Face of God belongs to John Gillespie Magee, Jr., not the Great Communicator.

Introducing: Lumpy the Car

Previously known as "Lucky." My car, uncrumpled. It's a custom job -- I paid someone called the Dent Experts $1000 to pound all those little bumps into the hood. Photo courtesy of my dad.

The bRidal Industrial Complex

Snagged straight off of BikeSnobNYC, but this needs all the play it can get: the Primal Wear bRide 2B Jersey.

The Primal Wear B-Ride 2B Jersey. Just right for the Bride-2-B! Chain rings and bike chains make up the "lace" on this bridal get-up. Classic corset design will let you show your "skin" without getting a sun burn (and not to mention a little extra exposure for the tribal tattoo partially visible near the "exposed" lower back).

This makes me want to barf on so many levels. Somehow, when I got back on my bike, I thought I was pedaling away from the insanity that include things like the modern cult of the bride. Also, if I'm about to get hitched, I'm gonna be riding around in a REAL corset, sunburn be damned.

And the tribal tattoo? I don't have words, only a face:

Thanks to a BSNYC poster for showing us how to do it right:


Courtesy of Sheldon Brown, of course.

Ironically, I'm in the market for a corset for an upcoming theme ride. Now I'm gonna shop extra-seriously for something extra-slutty. And it's not gonna be white.

But maybe I'll buy one for John? Now that would be hottt. Oops, never mind, they only come in CAUCASIAN!

Bleaaaah. Live in sin until we run out of oil.

MLK on Vietnam

Today I was reminded of one of MLK's most powerful but lesser-known speeches: his speech on April 4th, 1967 to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York City. He lays out an argument against the Vietnam War, and posits that working for civil rights is just one part of a greater struggle for social justice around the world. (I can't really write anything that isn't dwarfed by King's own words.)

Democracy Now! reports that "Time magazine called the speech 'demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,' and the Washington Post declared that King had 'diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.'"

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

What have we done in the past 41 years? Listen to or read the speech here.

Bravo!

I woke up before dawn yesterday (another bravo, but not the subject of this post) in order to take John to the start of his first brevet. "Brevet" is French for "diploma," and John definitely deserves one. Brevets are long bike rides that come in several flavors: 200 km, 300 km, 400 km, 600 km, and 1200 km. Riders are called "randonneurs," French for "rambler." This one was 200 km, or 126 miles, which works out to be about 120 more miles than I ride to get to school each day. They started in Malibu, headed up the coast to Carpinteria on PCH, and then came back again. At about 6:30 pm, John arrived back at the start point tired, hungry, 6 pounds lighter (eek! that's 2.72 L of lost fluids!) and happy. Well, happy to see pizza, at least. I'm really proud of him and I told him that lots in the brief time before he passed out last night. He's got me excited about riding more and covering more distance, and I'm unnaturally interested in this 1230 km ride that happens every four years called the Paris-Brest-Paris. Riders ride from -- well, duh -- Paris to Brest in the northwest of France and back again. My mostly-rejuvenated randonneur pulled no punches when he pointed out that we had to stop every few miles on our wine country ride. I'm sticking to my story that it was the incredibly yummy trail mix we were carrying that day. So a huge BRAVO to John and a promise that I'll be up to doing the next one with him. In the words of Yoda: “Do or do not... there is no try."

ISO: POTUS

I've had the plague for the past couple of days (on the mend now), so I've had some time with the NyQuil bottle to contemplate the Big Picture. I realized that while I could tell you how a candidate's sympathetic nervous system is responding on the podium (assuming they're all mammals), I don't really know that much about the 2008 presidential election. I was too embarrassed to admit to my parents that I watched the caucus results on the local evening news. Then my dad came up with some gossip about John Edwards and a $400 haircut. Further embarrassment when I had no knowledge of it and no retort.

Grassroots politics died for me the day Howard Dean made that weird noise, but I think -- after four years -- that I'm ready to see other candidates. Given my relative success with online dating in the past, I submit to you a list of what I'm looking for. In no particular order:

1. Speak. It's not right that I have to change radio stations when All Things Considered plays a clip of the leader of our country speaking. I really don't think I've made it through a full clip in seven or so years ... I just wait to read it in print and the pain is a little easier to bear.

2. Read. Books. With chapters. Bookstores are piled high with delicious texts -- history, economics, foreign policy, sociology -- these might come in handy when running the world. I'm jealous. Read the books that I can't because I just started the page-turner Lippincott's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

3. Iraq. Fix it. I don't know how, but do it. I'm sure there are a lot of smart people out there who have spent their whole careers thinking about the Middle East. Type "civil war" and "Iraq" into Google Scholar and see who pops up. Invite them over for coffee. They might even have written a book (see #2.)

3a. The War on Terror. Enough already. It's 2008 and we're debating whether or not "simulating the experience of drowning" constitutes torture. We're combing Central Asia for some guy in renal failure. I'm more tired of it than the folks making infographics over it CNN. My children are going to ask me about it, like I asked my parents about Viet Nam or McCarthy, and I'm not going to have a good explanation.

4. The Planet. Start fixing it, too. There is so much to do, I'll just give you the basics. Oil. Sucks. Stop killing people for it, stop running things with it, stop making things out of it. Got it? Ratify the Kyoto Protocol already, and I mean this one, not the second one they come up with in 2012. (Hey, another guy you may want to have coffee with. You may just hit it off, but don't ask him about the recount.)

5. Health Care. Um, fix it. I subscribe to the radical notion that all human beings deserve access to medicine. You should too.

6. Sex. Just a few items here, but generally none of your business. You hopefully consider most of this topic to be part of #5 and not #7. We can have it with whomever we want, we should have the opportunity to learn how to protect ourselves against diseases and unintended pregnancies, and we should fund all of the same overseas.

7. Religion. Generally none of your business, and evolution happened.

Extra Credit
A. War on Drugs - Pointless. Racist.
B. Race - Still matters.
C. Guns - You may own one (1) if, for some reason, you are dependent on game as your sole source of protein.
D. Bike - Ride one. Cool.

That's about it. Time to put down the green syrup, turn on the NPR and wade through a year's worth of sound bites. But maybe I'll watch "Obama Girl" one more time. (Obama vs. Giuliani is actually my favorite.)

P.S. - I really hope that I get put back on some watch list when I hit "Publish" because I've been missing that personal touch at airport security.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

What I've been up to ...

That's John and me at SantaCon, a gathering of hundreds of Santas who wander the malls and street of Los Angeles shouting "Buy more stuff!" and singing dirty Christmas carols and generally making trouble.

I was "hipster Santa," so I tried to be ironic by dressing in black, attaching a pom-pom to my Swobo riding beanie and wearing large sunglasses.

We got a police escort out of Pan Pacific Park, who explained that this convergence of Santas might be a distraction from some other, more sinister activity (starts with "t" and ends with "errorism") ?!? It ain't a party until the LAPD helicopters start circling overhead.

We got some media coverage thanks to Boing Boing tv, who ran not one, but two features about us. We were generally wary of television cameras in our face, but the Boing Boing pieces turned out pretty good. We know the "OH-kay" guy, along with most of Santas flipping off the camera or hitting on the reporter.

But I haven't spent all my time wandering the streets. I passed my Block 2 exam, and oh, boy did I pass. I even passed the anatomy section, which I've never done before. That's the test where they stick little pins with flags on body parts -- a human golf course -- and ask you to identify parts. I'm sure there are people who got 95% and are flagellating themselves over that missed 5%, but I am relishing my delicious 78%. Cut-and-paste of my butt-kicking score:

Final Exam

Title	Grade
Anatomy (100 pts.)	82.5 (82.5%) *
Final Exam - Part A (100 pts.)	80 (80%) *
Final Exam - Part B (100 pts.)	70 (70%) *
Final Exam - Part C (100 pts.)	72.22 (72.22%) *
Final Exam - Part D (100 pts.)	90 (90%) *

Category Average

78.94 (78.94%)

To summarize, WOO HOO!

Spent some time at home with my family. We agreed to do a "low key" Christmas and pretty much dispense with gift giving. I'd have to say it was one the most relaxing, enjoyable Christmases I've had. My family, on Christmas morning, eating cinnamon rolls and wearing paper crowns from the English crackers we just exploded:

What a nice family. Not one you'd see roaming the streets of Los Angeles. From left: Mike, my sister's sometimes boyfriend; Kat, my sister; me; my Dad; my Mom.

John wasn't able to make Christmas day -- he does have family of his own -- but he stopped by long enough to flip the hub on my bike and turn it into a fixed gear. For those who don't know what this is: this makes it so that your pedalling is directly linked to your rear wheel. No coasting, all pedalling. Why? You ask. Some say it makes for a smoother riding experience, and makes you a better rider. Some would say it's a silly fad, but I wanted to try it out.

Me, posing with my bike. I can ride it too, sort of.

Other tidbits: Welcome back, Kirsten, Chris, and Soren to the Lower 48. They are settling back into life in tropical Providence, RI after 6-ish months in Alaska. I hope she keeps her blog going, though, even though she doesn't have moose in her backyard anymore.

Got to go think of some resolutions ... #1: Write more often and with more substance, #2 ...

Ho Ho Holosystolic Murmur!

Studying for finals. I think that's funny. I'm sorry if you don't.

This vole is very, very busy. This vole is not doing her share of dishes. Partner vole deserves medal for living through this. Partner vole will get vole treats.

I took time out from the heart, lungs and kidneys to make our apartment look a little more festive:

I think that's a Serotta under there, but John would be the expert. I'm still searching for some of those classic glass balls to complete the look. And the whole thing comes off the stand, should someone actually want to do some wrenching.

B-b-brrrr. For SoCal, it is cold. I have started commuting by bike and bus, and I spend a lot of time outdoors these days. I'm enjoying it so far, but I have underestimated the chill a few nights in a row now. John is furiously buying winter gear at REI -- it's so cute -- and I am digging out what I have left from my days of mountaineering. Hats. Gloves. Long stretchy things made of synthetic fibers. Pics of me ridiculously bundled up to come.

The upside of riding to work/school is that you get to eat whatever you want! I recently treated John to an all-you-can-eat breakfast at the artery-hardening Cafe Med at UCLA. Below is the damage, or what remained after about 60 seconds:

Hot wings were the absolute best, followed by the hashed browns. Bacon also excellent, coffee needs improvement, but cut the grease and woke me up for class. In general, commuting rocks -- the food is great, you arrive at school with your brain working and not wanting to kill anyone.

Can't WAIT for break. Sleep. Convert bike to fixed gear. Buy band-aids for shins and knees. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.

I'd end with some fascinating physiology tidbit, but I'm just too tired.

When the dust settles, compromising photographs from SantaCon.

Adventures on Four and Two Wheels

The Thursday before last, I rear-ended a remarkably understanding woman driving a Mercedes while going west on Sunset Boulevard. I was lost in a reverie regarding the kidney while on my usual route to school. I went when I should have stopped in stop-and-go traffic. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and her car sustained little damage.

Lucky (the name of my car), however, was not so, and photos make it appear that I attempted to drive under the luxury vehicle on my way to class. The class happened to be Clinical Skills: Abdominal Exam. My classmates palpated enthusiastically, eager to find signs of internal bleeding, but all they found were an achy back, some sore ribs, and multiple frazzled nerves.

Against advice, and probably, in retrospect, against the law, I drove up to Santa Barbara for a Veteran's Day weekend with John and the family. We enjoyed some riding around Santa Barbara, including a visit to Velo Cafe (web site with shopping coming soon!), a bike shop packed to the gills with frames, parts, and accessories from around the world. I went to the bathroom and passed a floor-to-ceiling rack of vintage water bottles. We met the very nice owner Baron, who regaled us with tales of shopping for vintage bikes around Europe. He let us into a back room with lots of vintage cycling clothing. I picked up a maroon jersey (unfortunately Trojan colors) and some wool cycling shorts. The best part was watching John take in more bike parts than he could use in his lifetime ... you could see the gears (the ones in his brain) turning.

The next day we warily eyed the sky for rain and drove to Buellton for a "Sideways" ride -- a loop between Buellton and Lompoc that takes in some of the wineries and sights from the movie. To be honest, I was flat-out terrified that I wasn't going to survive the 40-something mile ride. Fear and copious amounts of coffee forced an emergency bathroom stop in Solvang -- a fake Danish village that attracts a lot of tourists but is frustratingly short on bathrooms. In case you find yourself in similar dire straits, I have mapped the location of the Solvang public restrooms.

The first few miles were creaky at best. I felt clumsy and awkward on an uphill stretch against an annoying headwind. But by the crest of first big climb, I was feeling better and taking in the scenery instead of gasping for breath. First stop: Babcock winery for wine tasting, trail mix, and some duct tape modification to my flapping pant leg. Then we headed toward Lompoc, while the wind headed toward Buellton. We looked around for a bike shop in Lompoc for a while, realized we weren't going to make it to Sanford Winery before it closed, and stopped for grilled cheese and pie. On the way back we took the smaller, winding Santa Rosa Road. As night fell, John managed to get his chain wrapped in an alarming tangle between his big chain ring and right crank. We attempted not to panic and John worked mechanical miracles while I held a headlight over the operation. The rest of the ride was in completely dark and eerily quiet; later John and I confessed our fears of the dark. Mine: running over a skunk. His: getting attacked by a mountain lion.

We shouted deliriously when we saw Pea Soup Anderson's, and kept up the noise until we hit the parking lot at our final destination: The Hitching Post. Undaunted by an 1 1/2 hour wait (John, helmet in hand, pants tucked into socks, in the lobby: "Did these people just ride to Lompoc and back?!?") we rode some victory laps and then sat down at the bar with a bottle of wine and roasted artichoke, followed by the best steak (flat iron) of my life.

(Photos by John on his spiffy iPhone!)

Extra Crunchy

I've got a blog about cars brewing, and I want to write about my awesome weekend riding bicycles in Santa Barbara. But today, for reasons I can't really go into, I feel like a vole again. As always, thank goodness for my vole partner ... perhaps I'll send him for some ice cream.

PS: I spanked my Block 1 final. But I'm still voleish.

A few words about fake blood

a) It does wash off. So far.
b) It is not anticoagulated! Luckily, in fake-blood hematology, the most effective anticoagulant is water. Studies have shown that a 1:3 water to blood ratio gets stuff moving.
c) If you want to create arterial spray, put your anticoagulated blood in a ziploc freezer (don't take your chances with sandwich) bag and poke a tiny hole in. Bingo! Systolic pressure!
d) Make sure the bag is sealed.
e) Do all of the above in a bathtub.
f) Leave ample time for fake blood to dry because that is so not going in the dryer.
g) Don't tell John I did any of this in our apartment.

Happy Halloween!

I missed my own birthday.

So I've been having a little pity party as of late, the usual "oh-I'm-so-depressed-that-I- have-to-do-first-year-over-again" festivities. But I was so pitiful this time that I bailed out of my own birthday, first out of a fun bike ride (all downhill!) on Tuesday and a birthday dinner last night. I finally finished picking up party detrtitus (kleenex and empty Ben & Jerry's cartons) and got back to my e-mail and the InterWeb. My most exotic birthday greeting comes from Anchorage, Alaska, where my friend Kirsten is still blogging as the snow comes down. She sends me e-mails with the word "sledding" in it and the Google-driven ads on my e-mail go crazy. Dog-sledding vacations! I was thinking fish tacos and Coronas, but now that you mention it ...

John bought me a great big owl candle to be my spirit guide, staring down at my from my bookcase while I study. He also bought me a first edition of The Classic Cuisine of Vietnam, from whence the curry comes. Phew, now I can branch out. This is blasphemous, but I was getting a little tired of it. The cookbook has awesome food photos circa 1979 and a nice story behind it -- when author Bach Ngo left Vietnam, she had thirty minutes notice, so she threw all her recipes in a suitcase and took off.

Ngo's story and the apocalyptic fires raging around us the last few days got me thinking what I would take. I have one box of letters and photos that would go, and I guess my two laptops would contain everything else. I think about disaster scenarios enough (hey, I'm a SoCal native after all) to know this right away, and hopefully I'll remember when the time comes. I also hope I stay calm and do smart things like this one guy who I heard kept calling his answering machine. As long as the answering machine picked up, he knew his house was still there. (Me, I'd be headed for the wine aisle of the nearest grocery store. Is there a Trader Joe's on the way to the evacuation site? Thanks.)

While I sit around feeling sorry for myself, hundreds of square miles catch on fire. Clearly I'm in the right place. Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone. I'll be stumbling around with a Herradura bottle as soon as I am able.

PS - I know you know that I love this blog, but this is especially delightful. Yeah, they kinda do.

Vole Update!

At the moment, I have survived my (second) first anatomy lab and I reek of formaldehyde.

But ... I just learned that voles mate for life. My friend Minh was willing to get close enough to me to report this very exciting fact. He was completely unaware of my recent interest in the rodents.

It seems that voles have more receptors for vasopressin and oxytocin, chemicals that work in voles and human to produce the very romatic-sounding "pair bonding." We get it when we cuddle or when someone leaves the toilet seat down for us.

Here are some vole life-partners for you:

WTFWAMFS?

Loosely translated, kindly tell me when my exam results will be posted because I am going out of my mind.

Out from the Vole Hole

I haven't seen my scores yet, but I'm bouncing back -- even I have a limit on self-loathing and second-guessing.

Special thanks to John for peering down the vole hole and yanking me out with a trip to Brooklyn Bagel this morning, and for sending me this story about bicycle-riding day laborers.

As is the eternal conundrum of the left, how to unite those who ride bicycles to make a statement (and for fun!) and those who ride out of necessity. I've been wracking my brain trying to work cycling into a research project for medical school ... I'll stash this article away for future inspiration.

By the way, I voted for the guy who got the Nobel Peace Prize and all I got was this lousy War on Terror.

But I did discover Loose Change - Second Edition in my local video store! (Yes I still frequent one ... sometimes I get too impatient for Netflix.) I know, I know, sometimes I take my conspiracy theories too far, but I totally had my dad convinced after watching it.

Tonight is Midnight Ridazz ... finally relaxing and getting my ride on!

Crunchy

This is a vole. Owls eat voles. Today I feel like a vole.

T minus 45 minutes

And thank you, Stephanie, for reading. I hope you get into that anatomy class. Then we can both smell like formaldehyde at the same time. We can go to Boiling Crab to freshen up.