post call brunch

grabbed post-call brunch with vincent & jen earlier this week. byways cafe, over in the pearl off glisan & 12/13th. breakfast daily from 7-11am. super tasty. filled with relics from the fifty states (or most of them, lost track), like license plates, souvenirs, and other trinkets that people buy when they’re traveling that are fairly useless. works here. the ambience is a refreshing contrast to most of the eateries in the pearl.

brioche amaretto french toast, blue corn meal pancakes with honey pecan butter & maple syrup (with a chicken banger on the side), & the daily omelette (i think had bacon, avocado, blue cheese). each of the dishes here were $8-10, banger extra.

blue corn pancakes were my hands-down favorite. the blue corn add an interesting color and grit/substance to each bite. typically with pancakes i feel bored & guilty by the end of a short stack as you feel like you’re shoveling in bite after bite of fluffy carb without real purpose or pleasure. your tastebuds get numbed with the monotony of the flavor & semi-soppy fluff. with this dish, the corn meal, honey pecan butter & maple syrup add enough layers texture-wise & flavor-wise to keep things interesting ’til the end.

definitely coming again.

the restaurant

french toast

omelette

blue corn pancakes

welcome back

i’ve been working a lot the last few weeks. esther’s been outta town for her epic east coast tour. aside from a quick bite after picking her up from the airport, we really haven’t seen each other since.

i finish a 24 hr shift and think,
“hey! we should hang out!”
“oh… i’m right about to leave town for a family retreat this weekend”
“… but i haven’t seen you for weeks!!”
“…”
“…??!”
“ok, i can stop by before i go?”
“great!!”

feeling a little neglected i drive home…

…and promptly pass out.

after numerous phone calls and texts (“um, are you there… are you going to open the door… did you fall asleep?”) we get to hang out!

and by that, i mean i passed out, apparently started drooling, and she folded my laundry.

welcome back to portland, esther. welcome back.

and we’ll be right baaaaaaack

…. 5 months later!

excellent. hello world.

ok, first update. saddle mountain. beautiful trail on the way to the coast. on a cloudless day, you can see st. helens, rainier, adams and hood. annnd you can see the coast line and where the columbia hits the pacific. perfect hike when your day off coincides with a cloudless summer day.

specs. 1600 ft elevation. 5.2 mile loop. thanks, portland hikers field guide. you make my life great.

you start off in the woods, do a nice hike with mild elevation gain. then you break out of the woods along a ridge and then come across saddle mountain. this is where most of the incline hits. the whole slope is exposed to sun, it’s gorgeous. they’ve got chain link fencing to hold rocks in place and to keep traction on the trail, otherwise i imagine it could get fairly muddy and slippery. for what you put in, hike-wise, you get a lot of rewarding views.

saddle mountain. perfect summer hike. the dots of fuzz on top = people

on the way up. the valley around the tillamook forest

still going up

st. helens, rainier, adams...

... and hood!

good morning, sun

one of the perks of surgery. seeing the sun wake up every day.

sunrise from the VA

a bad idea

i’m on call every 3rd night on this current service. it can be pretty exhausting. to make life better, i’ve brought my blender to work a couple of times and made milkshakes at night for the night team.

this last call night, i was mad excited. all i could think of was milkshakes all day long. i brought my blender, 2 cartons of tillamook ice cream, and a package of oreos. it was going to be a good night. blackberry ice cream with crushed oreos? yeah, buddy!

i had an early lunch. i skipped dinner. i pre-gamed by eating a large choco mint milkshake in the cafeteria. when milkshake time came, i had two. and then another half of one. and then had some more ice cream.

what an awful idea. i wanted to throw up all night.

the nausea was so bad that i had another cup of ice cream on my way home the next morning.

so good.

new record

just woke up. after sleeping for 20 hours. hoboy.

snippets from the dream:
- playing onstage for a huge concert. as part of it, two girls sang “toxic” and etern was playing the drums.
- big massacre/disaster in some building, had to run around triaging people & take them to the OR
- had to make new scantron sheets because the old ones weren’t working
- working on a powerpoint, of which the closing slide was a simpsons version of “empire state of mind”
- my dad texting me the blood culture results on one of our patients, so we could narrow down our antibiotics

flies

over the summer, there were always a few flies in my loft. minimum 2, maximum 6. they’d usually be happily flying in circles above the coffee table. every time i’d off a couple, more would arrive. i came to grips with this, and settled for peaceful coexistence.

enter esther lim.

she comes in, sees the flies, grabs a newspaper…. and instantly two are down and out. impressed, i join in, and there’s just one pesky fly left. she offers me tips: take the trash out regularly, close the windows. but oh boy, it’s so nice outside i leave the windows open anyways. i do take the trash out regularly, though.

as the weather gets colder, the windows then stay closed. today, i noticed something. i haven’t seen flies for days…. for weeks! then i notice the below.

i guess the flies get trapped between the windows? or that’s where they were coming from? at any rate, there were still a couple of alive flies, feebly trying to escape the inter-window space.

“esther, look at this! i should let them out.” “no. let them die.”

hm, ok.

update

update update update update!

woo woo

king’s mountain

king’s mountain. i’ve been eyeing this hike for a while. ~1 hr west, towards the coast, in the tillamook forest, with great views and steep incline. went on my day off, it was crisp and blindingly sunny, and the views were awesome. 3226 feet in a 2.5 mile ascent. the last half mile alone was about 1000 feet. brutal, but beautiful.

king's mountain... at the summit!

views from the top

in brief

i did my laundry. i closed the dryer door. it hit my forehead. it left a mark.

i was at work. i have a patient. she is a woman. she called me her cabana boy. the whole room heard. i was embarrassed.

i went on a hike. my toes were sore. i looked at them. wow, my toenails are long.

i ran out of toilet paper. i have plenty of paper towels.