hey all
you know that funk you get in when you're not really busy, but you can't seem to get anything done? yea that's been my march. it's not been stressful at all but i feel like i've accomplished very little and i really could have put in a few more posts this month. well here ya guys go...a few random tangents as usual.

nothing going on with my love life. there has been one very cute guy who messaged me a few weeks ago on grindr but has dodged any idea to meet up and hasn't been too 'chatty' after being the one to make first contact. i'm never really sure how to interpret online chatting/flirting. i assumed he was interested in developing something given he messaged me first, but all subsequent chats i feel like i'm pulling teeth and being 'that guy' who keeps talking without getting the hint. i guess i am just a little confused because he was the one to talk to me first so i figure he should be the one putting more effort into the chat but he's not. he's cute though so i'll keep giving it a shot.

aside from that i continue to have a complicated relationship with a regular fuck buddy i have off and on talked about non-specifically. i need to really just give you guys all the details but that is for another post.

i've been going to the gym more. not enough to be on the cover of men's health anytime soon but i'm pleased with myself for getting off my lazy ass and going a few times a few week. and it does feel pretty good after you get in a good work out. actually i've been averaging out to like twice a week which is still pretty pitiful but hey it's a work in progress. i do think i'm making a few gains and i'm supposed to start working out with my chief who has a body i wouldn't mind trading with so we'll see how that goes. it's definitely hard work and i admire guys who have the dedication to be at the gym all the time. if you have any workout tips or regimens feel free to share with me.

match day came and went a few weeks ago. (congrats to all the ms4s out there.) it was hard to believe it had been two years since my match day on march 17th 2011. med school is getting farther and farther away and it's such a surreal realization. (i know, i'm so experienced with my whole 1.xxx years of being a doctor under my belt) i really kinda miss med school though. even the craziness of intern year, it was still a good time and it's hard to believe it's been a year since that all happened already. one of my weaknesses is that i'm a sentimental fool but i think it's always nice to think back on old times (remembering the good and not the bad)

on a somewhat similar note, i've been meaning to write a post on my hookup history. not exactly a tell all, but just get a little more real with you guys about my relatively extensive sexual exploits. i kinda have avoided talking about it but another blogger i've been emailing says i should write about it and reassure other guys they're not the only ones out there who have or did fall into the hookup culture so i'll try to make that my next post.

i'll be waiting to hear this marriage decision. i hope it goes well. i kinda cringe though when i see all the press it's getting. i think the last thing we want, or at least i want, is to keep shoving this gay thing into people's faces. yes i want the right to marry another man if i so choose, but i don't want the general population to be turned off by all the crap this (non)-issue is getting. i was reading a piece on portman and his son, and it was interesting to read a statistic that said something like, 'most people turn in favor of gay marriage when they know someone who is gay'. i guess what that means is it's up to us normal, but dick-loving, joes to come out and show society that we're not that villainous after all.

penultimate thing, head on over to this blog http://closestednextdoor.blogspot.com/ catch up on the last few posts, and leave a thought or two for him. i'm interested in what other thoughts people have about his situation cuz i personally have no clue what to think. i think the bisexual thing is always more difficult to deal with and i'd like him to have as many different [constructive] opinions as possible. hope he doesn't mind the shoutout...

with that i'll leave you guys with this hot pic from seancody. more pictures on my blog is gonna be my new thing 'cuz god knows we need more eye candy in our lives. i think that's a really hot position for two guys to be in and they are both extremely attractive!

 

another stupid harlem shake video, but if you mute the volume it looks just fine.....

NAKED RUGBY PLAYERS DO THE HARLEM SHAKE NUDE IN THE SHOWER

i saw this commercial on tv the other day for the amazon kindle and was just kind of absentmindedly watching it (ok to be honest only really paying attention because i thought the guy in it was hot), so i did a double take when i heard the end and was pretty surprised by it. but i thought it was very funny and natural and it's cool that amazon would make a commercial like that. i'm sure there's some anti-homo group campaigning against amazon now...i suppose they could add book burning to their to-do list too.

check out the ad below, and also a gratuitous screen shot of the hunky actor in it.

first, check out this video. it's a harlem shake video of the nebraska gymnastics team. it's hot.

second, i did meet up with scruff guy and tell him i didn't want to date anymore. we went to happy hour/dinner which went well enough although the news i had to tell him was in the back of my mind. i kept trying to find a good time to break it but obviously couldn't find one. towards the end he kept bringing up what we should do after and i was like "ummmm....not sure." so when we were taking care of the check i excused myself to the bathroom, came back, and just said it. he took it well. he appreciated my honesty. he actually does still want to be friends. he did ask me what were some of the reasons i didn't think it would work. i didn't want to be that honest with him so i avoided that question but just told him i didn't feel the chemistry was right for what i was looking for, which is true. interestingly, he still invited me over to his place after and to make it brief, we woke up naked together the next morning. not that we're turning this into a friends with benefits thing, i think it was just more like a last hurrah kind of thing.

some of you commented my quest for THE ONE may be a quixotic search. i'm not so naive that i think prince charming will appear suddenly and i'll live happily ever after. (that was phone guy, and he's gone for now) but we did go on 3 dates and that was enough for me to know that there wasn't enough there with this guy to keep pursuing things. as someone put it, nothing was overtly wrong, but there just wasn't enough to build on and honestly i just wouldn't have wanted to settle with this guy. i'm still in my 20s, and i still believe i can keep searching those vast gay seas for the right man. there were specific points in my future man that i would have liked for this guy to have, but overall it really was my gestalt telling me this guy wasn't it. that's the whole point of dating right?

so, it's back to square one again. any suggestions for other online/phone app venues would be appreciated. currently i still frequent grindr, scruff, a4a, and okcupid. tried manhunt, match, and jackd but not interested in those. is there some new thing i'm missing out on? aside from like...actual human interaction somewhere?

hey all
a few topics to touch on..i realize my last few posts have been kinda boring/preachy so let me try to excite you guys with stories of my personal life.

the last two weeks i have been dating this guy i met off scruff. i think he may actually been the only successful real life contact i've had from that app. our first date we went out for dinner which went well enough as far as conversation, and we went so far as to migrate to another place for a drink. i was really getting more of a friend vibe from him so i was a little surprised when he went in for the kiss when we were parting ways. well he was a good kisser so we had a few kisses and that was that.

we had a second date a few nights later. we decided to go for a quick dinner then watch 'silver linings playbook'. (side note: bradley cooper is a fucking stud. why were there no gratuitous shirtless scenes of him in that movie?) again, mostly tame throughout the movie, then somewhere about 3/4 in we started holding hands...interesting. we went back to my place after the movie under the pretense of hanging out/having a drink and well...things got busy. just made out for a bit first and the guy was pretty aggressively grinding on me which i thought was pretty hot. in the middle of it though he said he doesn't have sex unless he's dating someone which i said ok that's fine we don't have to have sex. so we continued the pg/pg 13 stuff on the couch for a bit then he suggested moving it to to my bed which i agreed to. interestingly he started peeling off the clothes and given what he said earlier, i asked 'are we gonna get naked?' which he said yes to. so..there was that, we had some fun, and......he slept over. there goes the friend thing.

after that night i thought about what i wanted with this guy. he's very nice, we get along well enough, and obviously i like him physically enough to have some naughty fun. but at this point, i'm really looking for THE ONE. i truly want to find the guy who i'm gonna spend the rest of my life with. and unfortunately with this guy i don't think he has the things i'm looking for in a future husband. maybe a me in the past would just keep hanging out with this guy for the fun, but to be fair to both of us i thought it best that we just be friends.

that was my mindset going into our third 'date'. we met up for a dinner last week in his neighborhood and i had all intentions of explaining to him what i'm looking for and why i didn't think we should keep dating. unfortunately dinner was so pleasant, and we ended up going back to his place to watch some tv, which led to cuddling, which led to the bedroom, which led to us waking up naked together the next morning...you get the picture. easier said than done obviously to break things up.

anyway i'm supposed to meet him tomorrow for happy hour and i have all intentions to really break things off. it's really not fair to him for me to keep this up. i don't even know what he's looking for in a relationship, but my path is set. i hope he still wants to be friends though. i know that's kind of a weird statement since we've already slept together, but i think it can happen.

in other news, is it weird that i find daniel day lewis kinda hot? the characters he plays are creepy but when he's all cleaned up he looks pretty good for an older guy...

i'm starting this post in the middle of the night and it's funny because i can hear the neighbor below me snoring. i only hear it occasionally and i don't really hear much from my neighbors' apartments so this guy must be a loud ass snorer. maybe i should drop an anonymous note saying he should get screened for obstructive sleep apnea. also, i wonder if my neighbors ever hear unsavory things coming from my apartment. as much as i want to blast my speaker volume when i'm watching porn, i keep it at medium for that reason, but i'm sure they've heard a few moans travel from my computer to their ears...

ok random tangent but that's where my brain is at in the middle of the night. now on to what i really wanted to discuss. does anyone remember growing up in school seeing one of those posters that said something like "life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it."? you know, the kind of inspirational posters teachers like to use to decorate their classroom, along with pictures of the solar system and the human body and so forth. well at the time i thought those inspirational posters were pretty lame, but now i see how true they were.

i came off a tough month of service in january. very busy, long hours, lots of patients and work to do. as much as i wanted to die and crawl into a hole some days, i still managed to have a decent month because the other residents and i just laughed a lot, shrugged our shoulders, rolled our eyes maybe, and got through the work. and that's where that mantra kept running through my head, it's not about what happens to you, but how you react to it. when you get that 5th consult in an hour you can scream, you can be furious, you can rage at the idiots who are asking a consult for the dumbest thing, or you can smile and go see the patient. i would say the majority of doctors are not very thrilled to get a new consult, but i've been trying to transform my attitude to look at it as an opportunity to help the patient, add something their care, and maybe find a learning opportunity, even if you are seeing them for a dumb reason.

in one of my favorite blogs, the author writes a post or maybe it was just a comment, i can't recall, about how people seem to be more focused on negativity as opposed to reaching for a place of compassion and kindness. i don't know if it's human nature or what, but in this era you just kinda expect people to react poorly to something. think about what would happen if you spilled your drink on someone. how refreshing would it be if you could count that the poor recipient would just as likely burst out laughing at the mistake as they would be fuming that you just ruined their outfit or whatever. but really, when something bad happens, what can you do other than laugh and roll with the punches? i personally feel so much better about myself when i try to be positive rather than sulk and wallow (although i will sulk from time to time).



i saw a young woman in her late 20s last month in the ED. she had a known history of a very aggressive cancer and i knew the top things on her mind when i saw her would be whether 1. was this her cancer 2. was this her cancer and 3. was this her cancer? so i came in to see her and had barely introduced myself to her and her husband when i knocked over her urine sample that was sitting on the counter.  i had just ruined any semblance of professionalism i had and was pretty embarrassed, but this young lady just burst out laughing like she hadn't laughed in years. and then there we all were just laughing our heads off as i crawled down to fetch her luckily intact urine bottle off the floor.

unfortunately, she ended up having new metastases to the brain. i suspect she'll be dead in a year from her cancer, but i hope she'll remember that the day she was told she had cancer in her brain, she also got to laugh at a doctor spilling her piss all over the floor.

like a lot of life, we do our best to react to the situation and make the most of it. i personally think it feels so much better to react to things in as positive a way as possible. negativity just saps all your energy away, and heck if i barely have enough of that.

obesity

i have a post i started last night but i felt so strongly about a subject i saw today that i'm putting it on the back burner, although it will tie in well with today's post.

today, i watched a news story about new jersey governor chris christie, a self-admitted overweight gentleman who was even recently on david letterman to poke fun at his own weight and brought out a donut to eat as a gag. christie is also an aspiring 2016 presidential candidate. there was a piece on him on CNN and they asked the opinion of a former white house doctor on his health, to which this doctor responded she was afraid he would die in office because of his obesity.

governor christie responded today to her remarks with a few choice words, some of which included that she "should shut up" and she was "completely irresponsible".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/chris-christie-connie-mariano_n_2631944.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/politics/2013/02/06/sot-christie-tells-doc-to-shut-up.news-12-new-jersey

i heard the first part of the news story as i was cleaning up my apartment and i knew by the build up the doctor would make some remark about how bad his weight is for his health. any physician would say the same thing, white house doc or not.

i was disappointed then by governor christie's response.

i was expecting him to have a positive response to these doctor's remarks, perhaps for him to acknowledge his longstanding problem with obesity and his plan to take steps to improve his health today. there was none of that. instead, there was uncalled for vitriol directed against this very reasonable professional, who really was showing genuine concern for christie.

i was disappointed that christie threw away this opportunity to address the huge problem this country has with obesity and set a positive example for millions of america struggling with the same weight problem, as might be expected of a future presidential candidate.

i was disappointed by his negativity and his stunning denial about the real issue, his obesity. he says in his response that dr. mariano has never examined him to render a professional opinion, but governor christie should know that the physical exam starts with simple observation. if a patient of his size walks in the room, any doctor begins thinking about all the health problems that are in store for a morbidly obese gentleman such as himself. even any medical student can rattle off at least 10 conditions associated with obesity. let's try:

1. hypertension
2. hyperlipidemia
3. diabetes mellitus
4. coronary artery disease
5. stroke
6. peripheral vascular disease
7. liver disease
8. obstructive sleep apnea
9. cancer (breast, endometrial, or colon, to name a few)
10. arthritis

this story really resonated with me, i guess because i was hoping for more. i was expecting something uplifting. i wanted so much for governor christie to be a role model for our nation to tackle our obesity epidemic. this may be hard to understand, but it truly makes me sad when i see an obese patient because i can only imagine all the complications that will eventually ruin, or end, their life. and then to see a politician attack my profession, to cast doubt on our intentions in voicing our opinions? i commend dr. mariano for having the candor to speak in a constructive manner about governor christie's health and weight. i wish that he had thought the same.