…at the real job.  It’s not a record of duration of employment for me (Navy goes to nine counting scholarship time), but it’s some pretty remarkable stability for me and my family.  We’re now in the same place longer than any time in our 17 year marriage (4+ years in the same home; amusingly, the Navy had the prior record at 4 years).  For the first two years my ID badge that opens doors would quit working on my anniversary date, but fortunately that’s been fixed.  (A little unnerving to celebrate your employment anniversary locked out of the ED). It is, in fact, a little weird to not be thinking about / planning the next move, given we’ve done so much of it.  We’ve had at least 8 major moves, but that doesn’t count the ‘moving into an apartment while the house we’re moving into is ready’ moves, so it’s nearly double that number.  I do have the major addresses written down, somewhere. But, we’re now Home.  Stability, as much as can be had in Emergency Medicine, is nice.

Our weekly Grand Rounds is up: Medical Humanities Blog: Grand Rounds (Vol 3, No. 34)

Next weeks’ is a little different, at ImpactED Nurse. It’s not a theme, so much as a ‘send me your best’

Yes, my blogging dry spell continues.  I have nothing interesting or original to say (and I’ve tried, alas there are now a bunch of half-finished posts even I’m not interested in reading), but I’ve been reading others’ blogs. One I’m particularly enjoying is the first two parts of a four-part series by a professional wordsmith, James Lileks.  I’ve always liked his writing generally, but combine a writer I enjoy with a subject we can both agree is pretty interesting (the Disney vacation experience) and it’s true entertainment.  He’s obviously never been before, and after reading these, he and his family will be back, like me and mine. Here’s links to days 1 and 2.

Random Acts Of Reality :: The Only Time You Will See A Picture Of One Of My Patients
Enjoy a happy ending.

Nurse Ratched’s Place: Change of Shift: Volume 1, Number 24

Yeah, the title got added onto as I wrote.   This blog has been written up in the two big EM newspapers, in the Dallas Morning News, and most lately in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.  After the first couple I watched the sitemeter like a hawk, expecting the counter to go spinning. Nope. Now I always hope these articles will at least bring some fresh eyes to the site, but again sitemeter reports my desires are denied.  Nobody reads a print publication and then goes online, at least to look for EM blogging.  (I’ll suppose that if I posted porn or on inflammatory politics that’d change, but you have to motivate new readers, and EM blogging isn’t it).  It’s easy online to click and follow a link, which helps most bloggers (which comes at a price: it’s also easy not to follow the links). So, don’t think your paper’s write-up will make you famous, or need a better web host.   On a different note, the Black Wednesday blog-bugout has made me review every one of my posts and caused me to unpublish about 5, simply out of a desire to stay as far from the edge of the trouble-cliff as possible.  All the posts removed had to do with patient interactions, and they were fully anonymized and absolutely no patient was in any danger of having their identity discovered, but I found them less interesting in retrospect, and little to be gained by leaving them up.  Nobody will miss them (in fact, I’ll bet nobody can tell me which are gone, because they were all that forgettable).  (Like the ones I left up). I understand why Flea’s blog got axed; I thought it was terrifically brave or astonishingly foolhardy to blog about an upcoming / current trial, and think he’ll be back after his current trouble runs its course.  Though I have taken plenty of exception to his ED bashing, I still enjoy his writing (and we were winning him over on the ED front toward the end). I don’t get Fat Doctor’s signing off, unless there’s a lot more behind the story than was written (and there usually is, but it’s not clear in this case).  She was upset that “Someone in my department printed out my blog and showed it to my boss. He tells me he didn’t read it and won’t interfere in what I do with my own time as long as I do a good job at work.” (via Kevin, as even that’s gone from her site now).  If that’s what scared her off from blogging, why?  The boss knows and doesn’t care, expressly, and just because some idiot who can run a printer copied your blog in a failed attempt to cause you problems, you shouldn’t quit!  In fact, you won!  The only way the troublemaker wins is for you to stop the blogging you obviously enjoy, which is a loss to us all. So, both of you, shake it off and please come back when you’re ready.

While I’m self-censoring on patients, and since that’s the medicine I actually do, I’ll substitute some posts about other things, like life around the house. Last month I found this photo on the desktop, and while my initial reaction was dread (my wife has taken apart the mower that doesn’t run), the next thought was ‘at least she’s taken photos so we stand a chance to get it back together’. Yes, we got it back together, but it still won’t run.  Fortunately, we got it used, and, well, it’s deceased.  Oh, I could spend a lot of time overhauling it, but it’s surplus, so there you go.   Also recently we went out to dinner, and when leaving we picked up mints from the bowl.  As I was leaving I looked down before unwrapping, and found I’d gotten something I’d never seen before: half-a-mint!  Yes, the wrapping was perfect, so this was a factory quality-control miss. Oh, and it tasted just like it should.

My brother (the Aerospace Genius) and his family are apparently having quite a time on vacation: Oh, here’s the story, and yes.

Wow: 65.9 MPG | KnoxViews

via Instapundit.

Happy Birthday, Dad, from all of us.