A New Thanksgiving Tradition?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you are enjoying the holiday with family and friends. I will be heading off to enjoy my own turkey and gravy soon, but I wanted to take a quick moment to write.

For all of those looking for a new holiday tradition and worried about the amount of calories we consume during the holidays, may I suggest the Jones Soda Holiday Pack? Check out: http://www.jonessoda.com/files_new/flavours-limited-editions.html. You can 'drink' turkey and gravy, cranberry sauce, wild herb stuffing, sweet potatoes, peas, pumpkin pie, corn on the cob, pecan pie, smoked salmon, and yes, even antacid! Perhaps the rest of you were already privy to this product, but I had never seen such a thing until last weekend when I was out in Reston, VA, for a three-day AMSA board meeting. One of my friends received the holiday pack as part of our Secret Santa gift exchange, and during a rather stressful discussion in the board room, we busted out the flavors to try. The sweet potato drink was bit strong, and the look on my friends' faces as they tried 'peas' was enough for me to not try it. I highly recommend antacid though. It was by far my favorite and tasted like bubble gum.

It's been a long week, and I'm more than happy for a long weekend to arrive. As I mentioned, last weekend I was involved in a weekend-long board meeting for AMSA; we had some particularly difficult business to get through as a board. Being a member of a group responsible for the finances and direction of a large organization (68,000 members) has been a great learning experience and an incredible opportunity to meet medical student leaders from around the country.

I was able to spend some time this week with Dr. George Askew, a physician who founded Docs for Tots here in D.C., an organization designed to get pediatricians more involved in advocacy focused on children's issues. A fascinating discussion! I love meeting with doctors who combine practice and activism; I feel it's best to learn from those in the field so as to avoid some of the mistakes already made. He provided great advice on how to set up a non-profit organization, and when I asked him where he learned his information, he pulled - no other than! - the Non-Profit Book for Dummies from his shelf. I love it! So, this type of work has to be fairly straightforward, right?!

I'm happy to report that a new Trader Joe's grocery store has moved into my neighborhood, and I had the chance to stop by yesterday and pick up some wine for Thanksgiving dinner. When my AmeriCorps friends and I used to frequent these stores in CA, we usually were there buying our favorite drink, the 'two-buck Chuck', or the $1.99 bottle of Charles Shaw merlot or chardonnay because collectively we were quite poor as professional volunteers and getting our own food through food stamps and receiving free health care from the State of CA. Therefore, the two-buck Chuck was well within our budget. However, I know have to call it 'three-buck Chuck', as the price of wine per bottle has gone up to $2.99! Still, it is a great value.

I had the opportunity to get my MPH practicum set up this past week. I will start mid-January when spring classes resume, and I'll be working at NACHC, or the National Association of Community Health Centers, on data analysis related to medical education and community health centers. It may sound dry to some, but I am quite excited! I am very much interested in practicing in a community health center during or post-residency, so this will be a great match.
Only four papers left to write this semester ... and my last final will be mid-December. It's scary how fast the semester has gone! I got a paper back from one of my policy classes the other day, and my professor wrote 'if being a doc ever gets dull, [you] could start writing as a career'! We'll see ... another idea for that list of 'when I have time ...'!

And to end on a happy (but rather expensive) note ... I am the proud soon-to-be owner of a new MacBook! After owning several versions of a PC for years, I am crossing over to the 'other side'. My HP laptop has served me well the past five years, but my hard drive crashed this week, and the backlight on my screen blinks on and off making any kind of work not very conducive to getting done. It is a fine art in and of itself to adjust the screen to the perfect angle so that you won't have to work in the dark ... literally. I'm pretty sure I caught the Apple salesman in the last few minutes of his shift late last night when I called in to buy my computer. He was the typical salesman selling the merits of his product, but the conversation turned rather humorous when he asked for my name and credit card information, etc. He mused, "Lauren Hughes ... Lauren Hughes ... isn't that the name of some famous movie producer?" I've had a handful of people over the years tell me that a resemble a few actresses, but I've never gotten a producer. I told him, "Producer ... I don't think so, but I have been told on occasion that I look like Nicole Kidman." His reponse? "Owwwwwwww!" He went on to explain the attributes of his own red hair. Hmm ... I never knew that cat calling was part of being a computer salesman!

Happy Thanksgiving!