Yesterday was an early busy day - larger crowd for this segment of the imaging conference.  It was a pretty good time.  I got some advice for a slightly different route for my roadtrip to NOLA.  The summer intern's dad was on the expert panel and told a frequently heard yet classic radiologist joke - here's one version I found via Google:

An internist, a surgeon and a radiologist go duck hunting. There aren't any ducks, so they start bragging about their dogs. Finally they decide to have a contest.

They put down a chocolate chip cake. The internist points to the cake and says to his dog, "Sic it, Osler!"

Osler trots to the cake, takes out a notebook, and writes down all the ingredients, in descending order by concentration. Then he carries the note back to his master and wags his tail.

"Good boy, Osler! Impressive, huh?"

The surgeon snarls and says to his dog, "Get it, Halsted!"

Halsted runs over, takes out a scalpel, divides the cake into equal sections, dissects out all the chocolate chips and puts them in a container to sent to pathology. Then he goes back to his master.

"Good dog, Halsted," the surgeon says smugly.

"You haven't seen anything yet," says the radiologist. "Okay, Roentgen!"

Roentgen runs over, eats the cake, screws the other two dogs, and gets home by 3 o'clock.

Afterward the two other RAs and I sat around and chatted about medical school, public health school, work, boys, and everything else under the sun over the last bottle of wine from our reception.  After gathering up all of our materials to take back to the office, we headed to 21st Amendment again for some real food - not sure who did the ordering, but we had chicken wings, chicken salad, and chicken pizza.  No Watermelon Wheat for me this time, although it did look pretty tasty.

I'm a little sad about leaving my job - there's just a hilariously entertaining dynamic among the research people.  Hopefully the med school kids will get my sense of humor...

Yesterday was my unofficial last day at the office - today and tomorrow are conferences out at Mission Bay.  I had one meeting in the morning, but pretty much spent the rest of the day tidying up my desk and sending important files to other people and eating ice cream.  I got sent on an errand at lunchtime to get a birthday cake at Ben & Jerry's at Union Square.

While I was waiting for my cab to arrive, a dozen or so police on motorcycles went flying by down Second Street - the motorcade again, escorting the baseball players down to the ballpark.

Made it to Ben & Jerry's, got the cake, then spent another 10 minutes waiting for an empty cab to go to down Stockton.  By the time I got back to the office I was ready for lunch, only lunch hadn't arrived.  So the logical thing to do was have one of my favorite Blackberry ice cream popsicles.  If I were fat, I'd complain about it here.

Today was a 6am drive out to SF for the event on medical imaging.  Nothing to exciting or tragic happened.  Lunch was faux Chinese; I guess that could be considered kind of tragic.  My day (officially my last work day) starts just as early tomorrow.  Sigh.

Napped on BART until Civic Center - not too bad, only two short stops from my usual.  The only major embarrassment was running across the platform to catch the train going in the other direction...

Two official days left in the office and I had two phone interviews to conduct this morning - one didn't call in, so that was a relief.  Had a very nice lunch with the CEO and mutual friend at the usual work lunch haunt.  Every time I go there, it's always hilarious to me how they know the CEO by name.  It was actually a very relaxed, fun time, without the usual rush to go back to the office.  It was pretty crazy down by the office - Jack Falstaff is down on the corner of Brannan and Second Streets, where the streets were closed off.  We ate lunch outside, and every once in awhile we'd have to yell across the table because a police motorcade would come rumbling down second, escorting a busload of baseball players going down to AT&T Park for the Home Run Derby this evening.  Tomorrow will be even nuttier - we're having lunch brought in because of the crowds for the All-Star Game.

Then...my morning phone interviewed called when I arrived back at the office.  Usually I'll have someone on the call with me, but no one was available so I was on my own with an MD in Boston I wasn't sure was so gung ho about the call (or least it seemed so in our email correspondence).  Turns out this wasn't the case, or I asked all the right questions, because I ended up on the phone for more than an hour, rather than the 15 minutes we had scheduled.  Got some good interview nuggets/career advice - broadly among patients, the most information you can get about a person is in the patient interview, say about 70-80%.  Another 10-15% is from the exam, and the little bit left is from tests and imaging.  Some interesting food for thought.

Tidied up my notes from the call and cleaned my desk a bit, and before I knew it, it was after 4pm.  Around 4:30 we headed down to Bacar for my going away party.  Great place with great cocktails - I highly recommend the Pear Kahlo and the Kiss My Cactus.  Pizzas are pretty darn good as well.  Then...as the traditional office send-off goes, I got an office inside joke in artistic form.  Mine happened to be a "dashboard view" of a RFID tracking system - what it would like if someone slapped an RFID tag on me for a day:

...and that's what the signs actually read.

Funny thing is, everyone else who noticed thought it was referring to contraband; I immediately thought of the cartilage between bones.

It was really the joint summer picnic of CAPA, DVCCA, and CCCS with 300 of my closest Asian friends + non-Asian local politicians.  A few of my cousins came down from Sacramento to hang out.  There was a ton of food - sausage, hamburgers, hot dogs, a whole roast pig...

Here's my sister, mom and two cousins in the watermelon eating contest.  Don't know who "Chris" is.  That woman yelling next to me was so annoying.

There was also some three-legged racing (which I now refuse to compete in with my sister...our legs just don't swing at the same angle) and tug-of-war -  we had to line up by height like the vonTrapp children to get broken up into teams - I'm easily the tallest female there.  And my team won 3/3.

For some more random video entertainment, watch GGJeffy on justin.tv - here's a fun archive.

So my sister hands my mom a bottle of blueberry beer.

"Do I have to shake it?"

Obviously, I didn't get my beer-drinking genes from her.

On another exciting note, I've gone to buy beer at the store two days in a row without being carded. 

Went for a short run - it was a comfortable low 70s all day - very unlike usual July weather out here in the valley.  Washed and waxed and shinied up the tires on my car, then headed into the city for the evening.

It was foggy as soon as I passed through the Caldecott tunnel, but traffic was light and I blew through the tollbooth and across the bridge pretty quickly.  Matt was cooking burgers when I showed up.  (I have great timing.)  Hung out there with Chris and Dan, then met some new neighbors who are apparently interns with the Gap.  Not sure what that's about.  Woke up a confused Dave at 10 pm (confused is his word, I call it hungover).

I found a money parking spot at midnight so I stopped in at Northstar (which I still think is the sketchiest bar I've been to in SF), saw Kyle and Emmett + all the kids from earlier in the evening.  Now it's 2:30 am and I'm looking over an early version another YC-funded product, dropbox.  I should just quit this med school thing and bug test different web apps everyday.

Hanging at the weebly's while they work at 11:30 on a Friday night...they're all so disciplined tonight, except for the occasional perusal of the justin.tv site.

Slow day at work - the company CEO did come around at 4:30 to tell us we could all go home "early."  All the young'uns of the office ended up at 21st Amendment across the street for their Watermelon Wheat beer.  (the 21st amendment was for prohibition.) Pretty tasty, and they offer it in cans now as well.  Too bad they were sold out.

Back to the grind...although not for long - I officially have 6 work days left for the next four years of my life.

Fortunately for me, Wednesday was a holiday so I could catch up on sleep.  Not sure how I survived Monday - sleeping 2:30-5:30am, then flying home and straight to work, and still managing to stay up until midnight.  I've found a new form of procrastination other than justin.tv - watching old episodes of Rob & Big on mtv.com.

Today I had big plans to sleep in...until my parents woke up me up with a phone call when they were out this morning, wanting me to get up and come out for lunch.  It was 102º today, so we all promptly fell asleep on the couch when we got home. 

We went out to Central Park in the evening to find a spot to watch the fireworks - it was a little windy and I wanted to bust out my stunt kite again, but all the small children around would have been a recipe for disaster.  Same with tossing a frisbee, so I finally settled down with my newspaper until it got too dark out.

I'm a little sunburnt from lying by the pool all weekend.  I didn't think it would be so bad since we got up at 3pm and getting Chris and Dan out of bed took an hour and half every day...I figured the sun wouldn't be so strong by the time we got out there.  That, plus my SPF 55 sunscreen, and I'm still a little bit pink.  At least it doesn't look like I just did a terrible job of putting on the sunscreen...no weird pasty hand prints on my body.

The trip was ridiculously fun - I'm glad I made that last minute decision to go even though it's so not like me to plan everything 6 months ahead of time.  I got in late Friday morning - Dan and Chris were still napping.  I still contend that Vegas is the perfect vacation spot for them because it accommodates their usual Weebly schedule where waking hours are 4pm - 6am.  I finally dragged them out of bed around 4 to sit by the pool and bake for awhile.  We had dinner, then back to the hotel room to change, but somehow managed to fall asleep (Dan and Chris started referring to the beds at the hotel as suction cups...they suck you in as soon as you touch them because they're so comfortable).  More wrangling on my end and we finally got out to the casino where I watched them lose money at craps and roulette.  We went to Tangerine, the club at our hotel until 4 am and did some serious people-watching.  It amazes me how many people go to Vegas to pretend to be people they're really not and also how many girls get so smashed they expose themselves...just say no to miniskirts and jello shots!!  There was a particular quartet that we saw a *lot* of that night (...snicker...) and in the pool the next day - (I'm surprised they were still alive) - two blondes, a brunette, and a redhead, not unlike the SatC characters as Dan pointed out.  (I don't know why he knows that.)  15 minutes later, the redhead is telling some guy in the pool that her name is Miranda and she is in law school and has a 3.8 GPA.  I'm guessing its the kind of law school you can get into with a 145 on the LSAT.

Saturday night we went to Pure at Caesar's Palace, and by some fluke got in on the guestlist + ladies in free!  It was the birthday party for Rob of the MTV show Rob and Big - I had no idea who they were but Big is easily identifiable because he is really, really big.  It was pretty wild and packed - 4 DJs in 4 rooms (and we only found 2), plus a spectacular view of the strip from the outdoor terrace.  There should some nice photos forthcoming.  My highlight of the evening was the sighting of Bobby Flay of Iron Chef America/Food Network fame come out of the bathroom.  Fun place, even though it's ridiculously crowded and ridiculously expensive.  Even Lindsay Lohan was supposed to have her birthday party there.

The shuttle back to the airport this morning insisted on picking me up 3 hours before my 9 am flight, but I was at the airport and through security in 35 minutes.  Fortunately I was able to get on the 7:20 Southwest back to Oakland and into the office by 10 am.  I actually almost missed the shuttle this morning - I set my cell phone alarm for 5:15 pm instead of am.  Luckily, (although not for Chris) Dan and Chris headed back to the casino when I went to bed at 2 am and were back at 5:30 to wake me up. 

There was this guy on the tram in the airport terminal this morning who was talking on the phone about how his toothpaste was confiscated by security: "My breath smells because of terrorists!"  It would have been funny had he not been talking about this like it was his best joke ever.  Not that I haven't been guilty of repeating bad jokes back to people, but never before 7 am.

Back in SF - As usual on days when I know it's going to be a long 8 hours, I made a pit stop at the Peet's on Mission and 2nd for a large Scharffen Berger Chocolate Mocha Freddo - yum, like ice cream through a straw.