Nuts, Its An Egg!

Gardening is one of my favorite hobbies. Over the course of the summer Freddie and I have been planting all sorts of exciting things wherever we find room to fit planters. Almost every window houses planters full of various herbs and flowers. 

Earlier this afternoon Freddie opened the kitchen window to harvest some of the herbs for dinner and found a strange oval object nestled between the oregano leaves. A couple of weeks prior to today's event Freddie had found some pigeons trying to build a nest in the thyme plant but chased them away before they got too far. Deterred, the pigeons left, but had they returned to try again?

It had been a long morning and Freddie wasn't sure she had the strength to handle the delicate situation at hand. She texted me asking for advice and having never been in this particular predicament before, I said I'd take a look at it after school.

On the ride home I wondered what to do with the egg. Should I try to find an incubator and hatch the egg? Could I keep it as a pet or would it be better off in the wild? Should I simply solve the situation by sending it over the edge of the planter from the fourth story window? 

When I got home I headed straight to the kitchen and opened the window to see what I was dealing with. The object in question was indeed oval in shape and a light brown color with darker brown markings. I put on a pair of gloves and used one hand to push back the oregano leaves to get a closer look. 

I tentatively poked at the object, nothing happened. 

I sighed and moved the hand that was pushing back the leaves. As the leaves fell back into place the object shifted position and slid towards me, exposing its rounded yet distinctively pointed edge. I don't have much experience with eggs outside of store bought chicken eggs but I'm fairly certain that eggs don't have pointed edges. 

With a gloved hand I picked up the object in question and determined that it was some sort of nut. I hit it against the window frame a couple of times and it seemed far too hard to be the fragile shell of an egg so I tossed it out the window. 

Problem solved I wished the egg-nut farewell and sat down to eat dinner.

Minor Miscommunications

Another year is almost over. How does that keep happening?

I spent most of my time this year hospital hopping from rotation to rotation. A couple of days ago I finished my rotation in a community clinic. It was different than being in the hospital, I was worried that it may be boring there and it almost always was. 

Every morning at around 8:30am people would come to get hooked up to one of our 24 hour holters (we only had two machines). The other morning a Portuguese speaking fellow came in and asked if anyone spoke Portuguese. We had Hebrew speakers, English speakers, French speakers, and Russian speakers but unfortunately no Portuguese speakers. 

With the help of his referral from the doctor we were able to determine that he needed to be hooked up to one of the holters. We got him all set up and told him to come back the next morning so we could take the machine off.

The next morning the old man returned and we took the holter off him. He thanked us and then asked us where he can pay. Fearing that there was a miscommunication because of the language, we explained that he has insurance and he doesn’t have to pay separately. He contemplated what we were saying and nodded his head as he stuck his hands into his pockets and rummaged around for a moment.

“Well then, how about if I pay you in THESE?” he asked as he tossed a handful of candy in our direction before getting confused about where the exit was and accidentally scurrying into the adjacent storage closet. After a good laugh, we helped him out of the storage closet and thanked him for the candy before leading him to the exit.

Tossed Salad

Its that time of the semester again. You know, the lovely time of year when the sun is out, the flowers are blooming and  panic is in the air.

This semester most of my exams are at 17:00 as opposed to in the morning. It's nice not having to wake up super early to rush to the university for an exam (especially since I don't exactly live in the area nowadays), but 17:00 isn't exactly my finest hour.

By the time I'm done with my exam and ready to go home, it's pretty dark out and rush hour is in full swing. The mental stress from sitting around all day trying to cram as much information as humanly possible into the black abyss that has taken up residence in my brain finally begins to take its toll and exhaustion takes over.

As I make my way home I find that I'm just the perfect mix of delusional and disoriented. This precarious balance opens up a world of possibilities for exciting new adventures.

Last night I arrived at the train station just in time for the 19:46 train only to discover that the train wasn't scheduled to leave from the train station that I was in. It turns out that the 18:46 train hadn't left from that station either and there were a lot of very confused passengers that had been waiting nearly two hours for a train that wasn't coming.

An announcement came over the speakers saying that the train would be leaving from the next station. Passengers waiting for the Jerusalem train were to take a train to the next station and transfer there to the Jerusalem train. The crowd surged as one and we pushed onto an already full train to head to the next station.

Propped up by my fellow passengers, I took a look around. An older woman maneuvered herself towards me and asked "Are you also trying to get to the Jerusalem train?". I nodded and she looked relieved. When we got to the next stop I watched as she pushed herself through the crowd and elbowed her way up the escalator at lightning speed yelling for them to hold the train to Jerusalem.

Spurred into action by her reminder that we would all miss the train, everyone began to run. In the most unorganized fashion imaginable we made it onto the train and I even got a seat. 

Knowing that I would be going home on the later side, I had made a chicken salad to eat on the train. There wasn't much in the way of elbow room but I was hungry so I decided to eat my salad anyways.

All eyes were on me as I struggled to retrieve my salad from the depths of my backpack, unknowingly loosening the top of the container. Victorious, I held the container in both hands and gave it a good shake to try and mix everything together. Everyone watched in horror as I showered the guy sitting next to me in my dinner.

My immediate reaction was to avoid eye contact and pretend that maybe no one had noticed. Except it was a crowded train and everyone had watched me throw chicken at the guy sitting next to me. 

Eventually I apologized and tried to be helpful by picking the pieces of chicken and various vegetables off of his sleeve. Fortunately for his jacket, I forgot to dress the salad so clean up was easy with minimal staining. 

He was nice about it. Didn't make a big fuss or anything. Just politely nodded and began intently reading some papers that he had with him. We avoided eye contact for the remainder of the ride as I ate the remaining salad. 

Maybe next time I'll pack a sandwich.