You would hardly recognize me: I'm sitting in this lovely, air-conditioned office, wearing - get this - khakis, a dress-shirt, a tie and a blazer! Compared to the way I look at my day (and night, and weekend, and holiday) job, I seem almost civilized - no blood, no sputum, no vomit on the shoes, I do not reek of sweat and fear, I have not had to threaten anyone with bodily harm. Of course, this is day 17 of my sojourn into office life so some of the shine has worn off. Actually, kind of a lot:

I've done a ton of sitting at various desks typing on the teeny tiny keyboard of the mini-laptop I've brought, putting out reams and reams of stuff entitled Master Plans, Draft Action Plans, pages of deliverables which need to be in a deliverable format in order to be delivered. The past couple of days have been spent with the hammer down, nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, butt in the office chair, putting out these documents in which I recommend things like universal BLS training, repainting and hanging new curtains, collecting disaster caches, establishing emergency medicine as a recognized specialty. I am also experiencing something called "filling out one's time sheet." Some of the people here call it nation-building, which seems to involve a lot of sitting on one's behind, who knew?

I just hope that all of this work gets a wing of the hospital named after me. Or like something academic, at least a named chair. Maybe the one I'm sitting on.