Ending October

Tomorrow I go back to the department. Between my toxicology rotation and my vacation, I have been away for just over five weeks. We had Wednesday lectures as usual today, and several people told me that I looked really good, or different somehow. I think it's the vacation and my general disposition. In general, I think I am smiling and laughing more... which is good.

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Today my driveway got resurfaced. I finally found a responsible contractor who actually shows up when he says he will. As an added bonus, this is the same guy who insisted that he could fix the existing unevenness, when everyone else wanted to break up the old driveway, and start all over from scratch for two-three times the cost! The driveway looks great, and the edges are nice and tidy. It definitely will be smoother on my snow blower this winter and should help with some of my water drainage problems, too.

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I also talked with my computer repair guy (the same shop my car rolled out of), and my laptop is unfortunately a total loss. The problem is either with the motherboard itself, or the battery, which is so expensive to replace that I might as well get a new laptop. I think I'm going to just have this PC for a while. My main concern was that before the laptop imploded I was able to backup all of my digital photos, but my iTunes music (20 GB) was still on there, and with about 15 minutes of work-time when the laptop would actually boot up, there was no way to get the transfer process going. It would have been easy enough, had I not downsized to a 4 GB iPod Nano earlier this year. However, what the computer guru suggested was that we salvage the hard drive from my laptop and transform it into a portable external hard drive, that way I could keep all of my files. I thought this was pure genius on his part. I donated my laptop shell to the store, so that they waived all of the labor and diagnostic fees and only charged me $30 for the work and the hard drive case!

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And as for my research project, that has not taken off yet. First, there was problems with getting the chemicals, and then the pharamaceutical company "forgot" to send us the drug. Over the past two days I have done more computer modules on the proper handling and treatment of research rats. I just want things to get going before I start my ICU rotation at the end of November because that month I take 24-hour call every 3rd day, so to be running over to the animal lab is just going to kill me schedule-wise.

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The other morning I woke up to find frost on my car, which prompted a much-overdue oil change and putting the snow tires back on. I am really not ready for dark winter skies just yet. However, in the time that I was gone, many leaves have fallen, and the neighborhood trees have fully reddened.

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The Trick-or-Treaters have been really few tonight. I guess I could have gotten into the candy corn a whole lot sooner!