Lots of activity this weekend…first, one of my classmates got married in beautiful, beautiful Marin County, and the wedding was tremendous fun…we had to traverse a cow pasture to get to the wedding site:

The cow patties weren’t much of a problem, but after V said her vows, several of these guys decided to voice their approval:

They had a cake decorating contest for their wedding cake, readers who read what guests wrote about love and marriage, a Latin-American flava band (thanks to her Peace Corps connections), and home-grown and bottled wine. V’s mom, who despite being crazed with all the wedding planning, found time to embroider blankets for each of the JMP graduates, and I’m so glad the bride even found a moment to say “hi” to me.

I had not one, but six pieces of wedding cake, of the 11 cakes available (designed and decorated by various guests.) We danced all night long. It was cold, so I wore socks. Ignore the geeky dancing and admire the socks-n-sandals combo!

The next day, we managed to drag our butts out of bed and ran the Bay to Breakers. Or rather, managed to finish the race without getting hit by flying tortillas. I was surprised by the fact I finished considering how much I drank the night before. (Yeah, I just recently learned that the “headaches” I get the day after drinking actually are “hangovers”. Whatev. I also figured out what an “eye opener” was after realizing that I felt better after the race after drinking some more.) We ran behind some dude dressed up as “Tarzan” in a leopard-print thong, for probably about a mile and a half of the race, and I couldn’t help but stare at his sixty-year old saggy butt cheeks the whole time. Joe also saw a penis ramming a vagina. Pictures too graphic to post directly, but you can go to Amy’s site to see some more amazing costumes or complete lack thereof.

Our apartment has been taken over with boxes! It’s a lot of work, as you can clearly see by how tuckered out Manzie is from all her “helping.”

We’ve been having some ridiculously great weather in the bay area, and on Sunday, we hosted brunch outside on our deck. In fact, it was almost too hot, but Joe made an orange-lemon sorbet that we scooped into glasses of prosecco, topped with a mint leaf, and everything was a-okay.

The only sad thing is that our apartment is a heat-retaining box in the summer, and with every single window flung open, it still was not enough to bring the temperature under 95 degrees Fahrenheit in there. The cats spent all day prostrate on the hardwood. Every time we looked at Manzie on the floor, she would look up and make accusatory meowing sounds. This weekend, we also had a JMP dinner at another classmate’s house, and the food was Guatemalan-themed and yummy.

I don’t know how to chip in. Joe’s been doing most of the packing. He wrapped all the picture frames up, all the good china and vases, and he’s packed and shipped all our books and DVDs by media mail. My biggest contribution has been putting my shoes and purses in a box and taping it shut. I’ve also been rastling with putting our furniture up on Craigslist, which Joe thinks is a big waste of time: he thinks the amount of money you get for each item isn’t worth the hassle, which I am beginning to agree with. There was a woman who scuffed my walls and put a huge dent in the stairwell when her boyfriend lugged my file cabinet downstairs, and then proceeded to stiff me for the wine rack I sold her (she handed me a wad of one dollar bills that was about $20 short of what we agreed upon). There was the woman who made me babysit her daughter as she ran off in her Mercedes SUV for a latte, and then tried to bargain down what was already cheap furniture to even cheaper furniture. There was the dude (who was actually quite nice) who I helped take apart a bookshelf in the middle of the street at night — I kept on thinking if he wasn’t so nice, he might just put that screwdriver through my skull. There was the other dude who said he’d swing by on a Wednesday night and didn’t pop up until four days later, but he turned out to be totally normal: didn’t try to rip me off, didn’t put dents in my walls, didn’t try to make me babysit his offspring. Ahh, Craigslist, where-oh-where do all you Craigslisters come from?

This was my last weekend in Tahoe, and I was trying to get all nostalgic about it because who knows when I’ll be back?  Like the song, I’m leaving, and I don’t know when I’ll be back again.  Except that this weekend, it was 60 degrees out, there was barely any snow on the ground, and what white stuff was covering the ground was mushy and sloppy and hard to turn in.  It looks like it might snow again this week, but this is officially the end for me, which was a little bittersweet: I kind of hate Tahoe because it’s where Joe always went to go have fun while he abandoned me during third year clerkships (particularly when I had weekend call), but I kind of love it since it’s where I learned to enjoy skiing.

This was my weird conversation of the day. I couldn’t figure out if he was being purposely sketchy, or if he just speaks in a series of bad, bad, bad made-for-tv lines as his everyday normal speech pattern (I mean, I’m in the OC, afterall). Behold, the Enterprise car rental front desk encounter:

ME: Hi, I rented an economy size car today.

ENTERPRISE DESK BOY: Okay, miss, I’ll need to see your driver’s license and credit card…are you here for business or pleasure? If it’s just business, then I have some great recommendations for your pleasure.

ME: [stunned look…did he just purposely use a line?] Uh, business, I guess.

ENTERPRISE DESK BOY: And I’ll need to see one more form of identification. We have a great night life down here, if you want some recommendations for places to go –

ME: [cutting him off] I really don’t have the time, unfortunately.

…[some other interactions, one involving renting a GPS system along with the car]…

ENTERPRISE DESK BOY: Okay, well I have two pieces of news for you, one bad and one good. The bad news is that we’re done talking now, but the good news is that your car is waiting outside. I can fix the bad news, though. [his pimply cherubic face cracks into a grin]

ME: [my eyes are bugging out now]. I think I’m okay with bad news. Where do I go to get my car?

The first thing I did getting out of bed this morning was to ask Joe, “Who has the Senate?”

Otherwise, what a day. The times are finally a-changin’ with a Democratic sweep of the House, Nancy Pelosi to become the third most powerful person in the political landscape (and first woman Speaker), and Jane Kim elected to the San Francisco school board. Wee-ha. I also find it particularly swell that San Francisco’s proposition to call for an impeachment of Bush/Cheney passed. Sadly for the Libertarian party, Starchild did not win for supervisor of the 8th district, but it was kind of amusing to see “Exotic dancer/escort” in italics on the paper ballot.

Even though I’ve lived in California for almost a decade, I’m still a little bewildered by the whole proposition process. Why don’t Californians trust their legislators to legislate instead of spending so much time and money on creating laws through the proposition process? Call me lazy, but I feel that in order to be a Californian, I have to be far more educated when I go to the polls than I want to be. For example, proposition 90 (restrictions on eminent domain), was the kind of thing I had no interest in using brain space to figure out. The other thing that scared me was that proposition 85 (parental notification for abortions) was only narrowly rejected.

All in all, it was a pretty crazy day, plus Rumsfeld resigned! And Britney is divorcing K-Fed! What a day in American news!

This morning, I stumbled out of bed to turn off the alarm (alarm clock is across the room, to allow for maximal effort in turning it off, and hence, getting up), and also had to fumble to turn on the heat. We are now starting to use heat again, finally!

Speaking of cold, I got my first interview. In a very, very cold location, very far, far up north! Yay snow! I checked the weather reports over there, and it reminded me: tucking in the t-shirt or undershirt helps keep the cold away. I never have to do that trick out here, but back home, you always, always, tuck the layer closest to your skin into your pants. Prevents updrafts.

My dean’s letter is also up for review, and I’m supposed to go pick it up and edit it for grammatical and spelling mistakes. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s not like there are any surprises because I wrote the thing.

I also had a very bad dream last night, thanks to this tidbit on Boingboing. I dreamed that I was an intern, except that the hospital looked like my high school, and my attending was my old high school history teacher. And he was making us write epitaphs for all the patients, based on our admission history & exam. “Here lies Ms. Gregory, 54 years old, with a history of insulin-dependent diabetes, hypertension, and chronic atrial fibrillation, who died of a stroke. She screamed from the ED gurney, ‘and I have fibromyalgia, too, don’t forget!’ and told me how incompetent I was within minutes of her death.” We had to dictate them into the phone, and the guy at the other end of the phone would chisel them onto stone, and when the stone tablets came up for inspection, my high school history teacher yelled at me, because I didn’t know how to use the dictation system well enough, so the tablets all read “Here lies … hypertension … minutes of her death, end of dictation.”

Last weekend, before we went to Monterey, Joe took me to a Salvadorean taco joint called La Bamba, in Mountain View. I had the bestest carne asada taco and cheese pupusa ever, on possibly the hottest day of this year. “They put the cold slaw under the pupusa so the pupusa doesn’t melt the styrofoam plate,” Joe explained to me, which allowed me to safely avoid the warm slaw, and enjoy the fried dough-encased cheesy bean goodness of the La Bamba pupusa. And the taco was one of the most flavorful 3-inch diameter meals I’ve ever had: sizzling spicy beef with an oniony salsa that was perfection. Since then, I’ve eaten at 4 different taco/burrito joints around the city, in search of The Great Taco, which is actually the search for the perfect diced and fried meat. I should mention that none of these places would likely get five stars in the Zagat restaurant guide…but what they lack in ambiance they make up in grilled meats!

La Corneta Taqueria, Glen Park. Of course, I have to put in a plug for my neighborhood’s greatest attraction (other than the dog park), where I’ve been going for years now. My old standby is the spicy chicken super taco, which is like a Mexican chicken salad, with the amount of salsa, guacamole and shredded lettuce they put on top of this whopper. Joe likes the shrimp taco, and they’re famous for their seafood tacos and burritos. This is arguably the best and largest taco you can get for $4.52 (which includes a soda plus a bag of these amazingly salty, super-thin and supergreasy tortilla chips. Yum.) Their spicy chicken is the only spicy chicken I will ever order anywhere. It’s a little on the dry side, but that compliments the way the spiciness works.

El Farolito, on 24th St, cross street Mission. Actually, I think the original big brother restaurant is several blocks away on Mission Street, but I went back here because it was less crowded and because I think I’ve been here before and ordered a burrito…probably a good burrito, but I wanted to try their taco. I chose the pork carnitas and some pork from their al pastor spit because it just looked so juicy, and both tacos came with that dark smokey salsa, which is I think called salsa negra (duh). And while the carnitas taco was a little bit greasier than I like (this from someone who adores grease), the al pastor tasted exactly as wonderful as it looked on that spit behind the glass: juicy, tender, sweet. Yay!

El Tonayenese (sp?), on Harrison at 20th. I remember passing by this taco truck on my way home from El Generale every day, thinking “Wow, smells great…if only I weren’t afraid of getting hepatitis A.” I saw the review on yelp.com, though, and this week, was brave enough to try. The guy ahead of me in line was actually a homeless dude I recognized from the hospital, who was sure enough, carrying a clear plastic bag of belongings that is so recognizably the bag they put all personal items in at The General when they check you in. Hmm. In any case, I tried the carne asada and the carnitas, and they were both supremely tasty. Maybe I am a weakling, but I lacked the courage to try the lengua (tongue) after the two geeky white dudes behind me started ewwing and laughing about it.

El Castillito, on Mission at 17th. Apparently, there’s another, cleaner one on Church Street, but this is a hop away from the 16th Street BART station. Great carnitas, great thick chunks of smokey, grilled carne asada, really went well with the pico de gallo. I also liked the fact that a roving band of Mexican cowboys came in (well, maybe not cowboys, but they were all wearing cowboy hats) and pumped the jukebox up with some oom-pa-pa Mexican ballads. And while I speak absolutely no Spanish, I did get the drift that everyone in there except me and two white girls was talking soccer.

This morning, I discovered that someone has taken the search for a great burrito in San Francisco to serious task. Check it out. Unfortunately, this dude thinks that Papalote’s is the best burrito place, not realizing the fallacy of this logic — Papalote’s serves a California-fied burrito, which is great for American palate, not great for the burrito.

All in all, this was a great distraction from getting real work done this week, like finishing my MSPE (i.e. Dean’s) letter. From what I gather, UCSF is the rare school where students actually write their own dean’s letter, which is apparently edited by the dean. I kind of wanted to test the editing process by writing something like, “Ms. Ip has distinguished herself in her clinical years as a Super Cool and Amazing candidate by managing to get the dirtiest jobs such as disimpacting a 91 year old patient, fishing a dirty diaper out of the human waste bin at the request of a senior resident, getting a cigarette butt and jello hurled at her by two insane patients, contracting pink eye, gastroenteritis and influenza all within the same 2 week time period, and not knowing the answers to most pimping questions.” I jest, but still, forcing us to write our own letters has made me a neurotic wreck this week, forcing me to scrutinize all the painfully bland and thoughtless comments written about me by my evaluators throughout this year. I don’t know. Medical students are already by nature some of the most painfully self-scrutinizing and obsessively dogged and dare I say, perfectionisic, individuals you could possibly find, so making them sit down and write their own letter of recommendation to a residency program is like shaking a bag of treats in front of a dog for six hours and never ever giving him one all the while saying “Bad, bad, bad, Sherman, bad.” Shake, shake, shake that bag of treats. A veritable psychological mine field.

Last week, the forty-seven page “California Statewide Special Election” “Official Voter Information Guide” arrived in my mailbox. Some of the seventy-eight “candidates” for governor had accepted a $10 million spending limit, and were therefore allowed to buy a short statement in this book. It’s notable that Arnold (the big one, not Gary Coleman) didn’t accept the $10 million spending limit. If you have the money, why not buy the election.

Here’s the first one I want to show you. It’s not the Senator from Massachusetts.