I love that movie, P-C!

There are people who don't?

(Actually, I think there are. These people are wrong.)

Oh, beth, that all sounds stressy and ugh.

My own rant:

Here's what I just had to transcribe from Doctor Wordy (I'm fairly sure I'm not violating HIPAA, since there's no way anyone could make sense of the following, let alone glean any information from it that could identify the patient:

We performed an echocardiogram just to assess her diaphragm function, and while she was not breathing very strongly, both diaphragms seemed to move in the right direction, which is not a significant amount as she was not taking a significant inspiratory effort, and she had a small left pleural effusion.

Endless run-on sentences. Thickets of whiches, thats, ands, buts and althoughs. Filler words galore. And I have something like three hours of this to slog through today. I am so going to the division chief about this, because what's the point of it? It conveys no useful information to any other doctors, it complicates billing, and it's killing my wrists.

both diaphragms seemed to move in the right direction, which is not a significant amount

That "which" has no antecedent. Lamer.

What's particularly lame is that he's using all those words to say, "We performed an echocardiogram just to assess her diaphragm function. It was okay."

And, on replaying the tape three or four more times, I realize that she actually said:

...seemed to move in the right direction, but just not a significant amount...

which fixes the antecedent-lacking "which" problem but still doesn't exactly make the sentence a sterling example of crystalline concision.

And tense drift. Did I mention the tense drift? In a single paragraph on a patient exam, she wanders from past to present and back again over and over, often within the same (run-on) sentence. And the un-cute habit of rattling off either the drugs the patient is on with no doses or the doses without the drugs.

{{beej}} and {{beth}}

My parents want me to move back near them. So near, in fact, that my dad keeps telling me that my room in their house is still available any time I want it. Since his strokes, he does this just about every time I talk to him.

Is it bad that I've spent all morning working on homework while at work and not doing any actual work work? I'm about halfway (more like 2/3 actually) through writing a paper that's due tonight I needs to finish it.

Check it out, Susan. The Mariners have two of the top 10 prospects in baseball right now. (Of course, so do the division sharing Angels.) Ginger, the Braves have #1. In order...

Andy Marte, 3B, Atlanta
Delmon Young, OF, Tampa Bay
Felix Hernandez, RHP, Seattle
Dallas McPherson, 3B, Anaheim
Casey Kotchman, 1B, Anaheim
Ian Stewart, 3B, Colorado
Joel Guzman, SS, Los Angeles
Prince Fielder, 1B, Milwaukee
Daric Barton, C, Oakland
Jeremy Reed, OF, Seattle

Yup. We're pretty excited about Felix Hernandez in particular. Though it's a very cautious excitement, with lots of superstitious wardings against the wrath of the sportsgods, because we've got something of a history of brilliant pitching prospects who have career-wrecking injuries before they even make it to the big club.

I spend a fair amount of time in Mariners blogland, especially on USS Mariner. The guys who write it are brilliant, but some of the comments are just so naively optimistic this time of year. General consensus is that it looks like we have a .500 team this year. DH predicts 80 wins. I'm a bit more optimistic--my bet is 85. I must've counted a dozen, "Don't count us out yet! We could win 95! We could contend!" comments this morning.

Of course, I guess that's the joy of spring training. Everyone is in first place.

My parents, who are nearing 60, retired 3 years ago and moved to New Mexico. They still get the *big guilt* from my dad's parents back in Minnesota. I find this so funny because I always think of my parents as adults.