A few odds and ends (a great Dylan song, BTW) from the last couple of weeks. First of all I should say that my mood is the best it's been in probably years. Not sure what all that's about, but I have a few ideas. I don't necessarily care, either!

On the way back to Ireland after a wonderful vacation I had two exciting sitings. The first was Cornel West, who was on the plane from Logan to Newark. A tight, ill-fitting suit and an enormous afro made for a hard-to-miss event. I realized I don't know a think about his writing/thinking, so if any of you know something of his worth reading (and also accessible) let me know. The other was a ring necked pheasant along the side of the road in Shannon. Gorgeous. I had just gotten off a red-eye, so it's possible I was hallucinating, but probably not.

My time in Limerick was fine. I was staying with an obsessive compulsive, ultra Catholic woman and her husband, who were both slightly racist, and generally afraid of unfamiliar things. Very much enjoyed reading, watching, and talking about sad/scary things going on in the world, particularly medically related ones. The ENT was OK. They were all very nice, but not yet used to having students around. A lot of the job is looking in people's ears and clearing wax out, or telling parents that it's been a bad winter for ear infections, and no actually, your son or daughter does NOT need grommets thank you very much. I got to scrub in for one surgery so that I could stand closer and see more, but even then they're operating on such small areas that it's hard to see much. My last patient before I left early (to make it to a choir rehearsal) was a lady in the ICU who had bleeding varices. For some reason the blood that continued to ooze after she was fixed congealed in her oesophagus instead of going into her stomach, so she had a huge clot gumming up the works. Two different gastroenterologists had already tried their hands at solving the problem, to little avail (is that an acceptable phrase?) so the ENT consultant tried (his equipment was slightly different, which may have accounted for his success) and was able to vacuum out the rest of the clot.

I'm excited about choir for the moment. Some Tchaikovski, Schubert, Vittoria. Beautiful stuff.

Bedtime for Bonzo