yesterday we met up with J, an old friend of mine from high school. we both went to umich for college and kept in touch afterwards through sporadic emails and of course, facebook, but i think the last time i saw him in person was in college. 8 years ago! there is smthg nice about seeing a familiar face here. i mean, we get along alright. everyone's nice at work and then on the weekends we're able to do whatever we want, but we don't see any of our friends and family on a regular basis, and living in an area for a year isn't long enough to develop close friends. so yeah, hanging out w/ J was like a breath of fresh air. too bad he doesn't live in the city!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
we went to a restaurant called burgers & beer & breakfast in tremont today. yes that's really what the place is called! originally it was burgers & beer, but then they tacked on the breakfast part of it hehe. breakfast is actually what we were aiming for, but we got there at 1:05pm... and the door was locked. the breakfast portion closed at 1pm! luckily, it turned out that there was another door, and that door brought us right to the burgers & beer part of the restaurant. cute, very cute. so anyway, it was a little disappointing b/c i was totally craving breakfast, but the food was still good. plus, tremont was having an art walk this weekend, so we walked around there a little bit. it was nice to walk around an art fair again. admittedly i didn't pay that much attention to the art... i just liked seeing all the dogs... and dogs there were! in the 3 months of living in cleveland, i don't think i'd seen as many dogs as i did today! i guess all the dogs are in tremont. hmmm.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
i started my new job this past monday. it's not bad so far, but i've only worked 4 days so i'd be in really big trouble if i thought it sucked already! this job actually works out perfectly for me... i was lucky to stumble into it right as i decided i should get my butt in gear and do some job searching! i have to admit, i doubted that it'd actually happen, since i had to have sooo many interviews w/ so many members of different committees, but now i am officially employed. it's a 1-year position, which is what i needed to match gopooh's fellowship. i'll be doing what i'd originally planned -- locum tenens -- but salaried, so i don't need to think about when i'll get paid. i have a 'home base' in beachwood, but i fill in for doctors at other health centers too. i work 38 hours/week, a far cry from the part time fantasy i had, but oh well. the most important thing is that there is no call and no inpatient! :) i am still a bit slow at the whole EMR thing, but one of the guys here gave me a couple general templates to use, and i like them. i have to figure out how to tweak the exam choices though, so that the options sound more like my own wording! we'll see how this job pans out. there is a potential to become permanent afterwards, if we stay in cleveland.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
i completed 1.5 days of EMR (electronic medical record) orientation between yesterday and today. it was great fun. NOT! it was like a flashback to this computer programming class in high school -- i was w/ it up until we were 'tested' on what we'd 'learned' and had to do everything ourselves, and then i realized how much fumbling i was doing. i was like, wait, HOW do i find that abdominal pain smart text template?... and it won't convert my phrase into a smart phrase! grrr. a bunch of the other new staff at the orientation had used EMR of some sort before, so they were a bit better at it than i was. apparently CCF piloted their EMR 13 years ago. 13 years ago! the closest we got in residency was dictating hospital admissions/discharges and sending our outpatient medications electronically through a third-party website. i mean, how could we have been that far behind??? well, what can i say. this is the future, so i'm glad i'm hopping on the bandwagon now as opposed to 5 years from now... we'll see how it goes.