Greetings from sunny New York!

Yeah, I said it.  I'm writing this at a window in my sister's apartment, and it is in fact a sunny day in Brooklyn.  In February.  And 50-odd degrees outside.  What is the world coming to?

The reason why I'm writing this at my sister's apartment window in Brooklyn is that I felt the intense desire to write something and really couldn't think of anything story-like or poetry-like to work on.  So, blogs it is.  I know you feel blessed and favored.

The fact is I've been feeling a lot of pressure to write since I got up here.  Medical journalism may not be my cup of tea, precisely (Sanjay Gupta I ain't), but with all the slogging through scientific journals and figuring out how to make medicine accessible and even interesting to the lay public, I'm actually having to think about things like grammar and style and subject-verb agreement and all that English-teachery goodness I haven't touched since college.  It's really rather refreshing.  It also opens up the floodgates so that I keep wanting to write poetry on the subway.  Wanting to, not being actually able to either mentally or, well, physically: this is the Q we're talking about here.  Hypergraphics of the world unite and grab your pens/laptops and don't stop till you run out of words?  Somehow that just doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Well, in any case, because you may not care but I believe in the sharing-is-scaring principle, things I've accomplished so far in the Big Apple:

1.  Finished the TARDIS washcloth.  Picture below:

2.  Made my sister a Regency gown with sash.  Only took me about a gazillion tries to get the top to actually fit.  I don't remember the pattern giving me that kind of issues the first time around.  What a difference a thicker/stiffer fabric makes?
3.  Discovered I need gray embroidery thread for awesome wedding present.
4.  Covered the Whitney Houston story for 2 hours on a Sunday and compiled expert quotes for a flu season update.
5.  Sat on the set of ABC World News and watched the back of Diane Sawyer's head.
6.  Wrote a poem.  Yeah, and it doesn't totally suck.  Few more weeks of this and I might actually get back to college level.
7.  Started a Twitter account.  To be more accurate, my boss made me start a Twitter account.  When your boss is the chief medical correspondent at a major news station, you get your arse on a computer and start twittering.  Tweeting?  Whatever.
8.  Made hot buttered rum without a recipe.

Actually, maybe I'm proudest of that last one.  Think if the pediatrician thing doesn't pan out I might have a future as a bartender.  No, I'm not serious, you can go back to the bars now.