Well, I'm feeling rather cheerful.
I've been working at MAMC, Madigan Army Medical Center, with an 1.6 to 2 hour commute each way for 3 weeks. So far I have seen exactly one patient alone and then the computer note took me about 3 hours, what with meeting with the computer geek, I mean, tech guy who told me everything that I was doing that was wrong. The electronic medical record has four different intersecting programs and is rather challenging. They've already asked me to stay for longer than three months, mostly I think because I am entirely cheerful about the computer training and because they keep moving me around to plug different holes and I don't mind. Also I'm being a self-starter and have gone off to the "Help" desk where the eye-bagged cynical computer guys say, "Yeah, the passwords they give you only work 50% of the time at best." And I am cheerful there and hurry up and wait.
I have a bumper sticker that says "Honor veterans and fight for peace." That's a contradiction that I can hold in my head with no difficulty. I like contradictions, they make you think. I'm happy at this job because the administration doesn't hate me, like my old hospital, and I no longer expect an electronic medical record to make sense or make my job easier. They have me "shadowing" various doctors and physicians assistants, all of whom have work-arounds and ignore everything that the tech guy told me. The "providers" (the current politcally correct term for doctors and midlevels, midlevels being nurse practitioners and physicians assistants) just want to see their people and get them helped, computer be damned. The creative variety of work-arounds makes me quite cheerful. Try to standardize people, by god, it won't happen outside of McDonald's.
I am not minding the commute much. I listen to NPR or Mozart or Talking Heads or Hank Williams III or the Offspring and I bought a set of CME (Continuing Medical Education) CDs so can catch up on the latest greatest ideas about chronic pain or subclinical hypothyroidism or bone strength. I decide whether I agree and try to absorb their points for the boards. Though I couldn't find anything to do on New Year's Eve at the job, so spent the day working on the ABFM, American Board of Family Medicine, on line requirements and now my board are extended from 2010 to 2014. So you are no doubt deeply impressed that I am a Board Eligible/Board Certified Family Physician. No? Well, honestly, it's just more silly acronyms. Treatments rise and fall and science comes up with more theories and I am turning into one of those old crotchety doctors who doesn't agree with half of the party line. Which is just fine. If one lasts past age 50 working, one is an old doctor.
Meanwhile I signed my bank loan and the new clinic, my clinic, is being polished inside at a frightening rate. "Oh, shit." I think. Today we had to go look at flooring. I have absolutely no idea what the flooring was in the clinic I've been in for the last 3 years. None. Kinda white vinyl with speckles. The choices are endless. Gotta stand up to iodine and blood, but nothing much more toxic. I stroked the cork flooring while my beaux/contractor discussed flooring with the owner of the floor place. Should be low maintenance because my dust bunny tolerance is way high and I'm not into polishing. Well, it'll all work out, as my friend Alice used to say. The target opening date is April 1, which suits me perfectly.
The Introverted Thinker is doing well with me back at work. We have a Cook's Illustrated magazine with some 400 30 min dinners and we have picked a way to work through them methodically, two per week. This plan is deeply comforting to her. She made the veggie burgers, with chickpeas and a yohgurt/cucumber sauce, very middle eastern, on Friday. I now have money coming in instead of just going out, which is a relief. And I like to work. Isn't that terrible? But I do.