No more late rooms & Power failure

Today marks a monumentous day. It is my last official late room as an anesthesia resident. For those of you who don't know, during our first year of anesthesia residency, we have to periodically stay late (approximately 7-9pm) and then go to work the next morning. There is nothing worse than a late room (except for being on call in the ICU and being on call on a Saturday). The thing that sucks so much about being in a late room is that you have to go to work the next morning. When you're on call, you're up all night but at least you get to go home and sleep the next day. So I am quite happy that I am almost done with my late room.

Also, Marji told me that we don't have any power at our house. There was a storm (although I would have never known because I was in a windowless box all day long called the OR). We have lost our power every year in the summer. Last year, we lost our power for about 4 days. It's really amazing how much we depend on electricity. It's one of those things that you really don't appreciate until it's gone. That's the way humans are. I wonder why we're like that. What is so hard about being content with what you have and appreciating the good things that we are blessed to have. It's probably due to a natural survival skill of always wanting to be safer, or have more food, or to simply just have more stuff. There must have been an evolutionary advantage to constantly striving for more than what you have. If you're happy with having 1 stick, then someone else will have a bigger stick, and knock you over the head with it and have 2 sticks now. It's a primitive instinct that drives us. Without it, we would be stagnant. It has also been engrained in our minds from an early age to strive for excellence. Now that we have safety, we don't need to have such mental anguish about wanting more, but we still do. The harder thing now is to realize that it's ok to be happy with items you have. It's hard to accept and appreciate the moment. That is something to strive for.

That being said, I'm still pissed off that I don't have any electricity at my house. Oh well.