Sunday 28 October 2012

Frankenstorm

Okay, I am feeling distinctly uneasy. Why? Because I just checked my Yale mail and in part it read:

"STAFF - ONLY ESSENTIAL STAFF ARE REQUIRED TO COME TO WORK ON MONDAY. We all owe a great debt to the hundreds of essential staff who have already made plans to be on campus starting tonight and/or tomorrow to care for the campus and undertake essential services ranging from dining to health services to utilities, police/security and grounds—and many others. If you have any doubt about whether you are considered an essential service provider, please contact your supervisor immediately.
NOTE: Those staff with clinical responsibilities for patients at Yale Medical Group or the Hospital will receive a special email from the Medical School tonight to outline which staff will be needed to report to work since some patients will be seen tomorrow.
For all staff who do not provide essential services, your work is cancelled for Monday and you should not report to work. Because the University is undertaking the almost unprecedented action of cancelling classes and closing offices on Monday, you will receive your regular pay and not be asked to use vacation/sick time. We will make the decision about Tuesday work requirements by Monday early evening.
YALE HEALTH – Urgent Care will continue to operate throughout the storm. All non-emergency appointments for Monday will need to be rescheduled. Please call to reschedule once the storm has passed.
OFFICES ARE CLOSED for Monday except for essential services. This means that all of the libraries, the Payne Whitney Gym, and regular student support services will not be available. As noted above, the Medical School will be making its own decisions about the clinical practices for patients.
ALL EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES ARE CANCELLED FOR MONDAY. This includes rehearsals, performances, varsity, club, and intramural sports practices and contests, and the like.
TRANSPORTATION - The fixed-route Yale Shuttle System will not be operating after Midnight tonight. The door-to-door Safe Rides will also stop operations at midnight; if you have a true transportation emergency, please call 203-785-5555. We will post when Yale Transportation Services resume on www.emergency.yale.edu"

EEK. They are taking this hurricane business super seriously and now I am slightly regretting moving into a studio that consists of one room with four giant windows (plus bathroom, also with giant window). Hurricane safety 101 says get into a room with no windows. Not gonna work in this place.

I have some bottled water and food in case the power goes out (nothing exciting - Powerbar type stuff and cereal and hummus and almonds) but no flashlight or anything of the sort due to (SIGH) having $9 in cash to last the week and no access to my credit card because I left it at the Rusty Bike in Oxford at my leaving do... Great timing as per usual.

At the moment it's just windy and nothing too crazy going down, but feeling uneasy in that herd mentality kind of way. Tornadoes I know how to do; hurricanes are a new one on this Alberta girl.

Maybe the whole thing will be an anticlimax?...


Thursday 25 October 2012

The Medical Library

Started my new gig on Monday (and the backstory to that is a whole other long story...) We will be looking at data from kids with Tourettes, so I figured I better do some background reading so I know what to expect/what everyone is talking about.

So, I went to the medical library and got my little slip of paper with the Dewey number on it and asked the lady at the desk where the book would be. Her eyes got wide and she said, "Oooh, I'm really not supposed to let you down there, but I suppose you can get your book if you're really careful."

Which was a first for me in terms of conversations with librarians.

So here was the route to the books on Tourettes:

Down the stairs

Past the grinning skeleton


Past the room full of brains in jars


Through the darkened room of empty shelves lit by a ghostly glow


Through the Do Not Enter tape


And into the creepy little room of flickering lights.

That said, the book was exactly where the Dewey number said it would be!