by the numbers
I've never done one of these, but they seem to work for other blogs so here goes. My trip to Utah, by the numbers:
5 -- hours spent in the air traveling from Dallas to Salt Lake City
4 -- hours spent in the Phoenix airport waiting for connecting flight to Salt Lake City
35 -- minutes spent waiting for my luggage to appear on baggage claim carousel in SLC before realizing that no more luggage was coming and my bag was nowhere to be found
1 -- inch within taking a man's life for losing my bag I came before they located my bag in a back room where it was stored because it came on an earlier flight while I was sitting for four hours in the Phoenix airport
70 -- dollars, approximate cost of my meal with current residents at a Brazilian steak house
10 -- dollars, approximate reasonable cost of the grilled vegetables, pineapple, and hummus I ate at Brazilian steak house
3000 -- approximate number of times I had to decline servers entreaties to try one of their skewers of grilled meats
72 -- seconds of conversation managed during dinner without interruption by servers with skewers of grilled meats
1 -- Kleenex folded into a fan in my hotel room
0 -- minutes the light rail train was late to go to the medical center, it was awesome
51 -- degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature Friday morning, which was brisk, clear, and completely the opposite of the predictions I had read online
6 and 5 -- feet and inches, respectively, of a girl interviewing for an internship spot at Utah
1 -- internal medicine residents from Southwestern who tried to woo me to Utah and internal medicine
50 -- days a neurology resident claimed to have been on the slopes last year during his internship
0 -- people who did not mention how great and easily accessible the skiing was around SLC
0 -- interest I have in strapping ungainly weights to my legs and dangling from a lawn chair 15 feet in the air as it carries me half a mile up a mountainside, but thanks anyway
5 -- separate interviews by neurology faculty
1 -- faculty interviewer who wasn't a freak in some way; this also was the interviewer with whom I felt I bombed the most, which probably says something about me
1 -- thick brown haze of smog overlying the entire city as seen from the medical center
2 -- rides on Express Shuttle between hotel and airport
2 -- overweight and slightly insulting drivers of Express Shuttle
5 -- scary women sharing shuttle from airport on their way to a Xango convention
1 -- of the five women who tried to convince me that Xango would be a great sideline business for me to pay off student loans while offering a great alternative treatment to my future patients
10^345434568796 -- magnitude in kilotons of the strength of will I exhibited in not telling her what a moron she was
1 -- gift bag containing saltwater taffy, honey, and Jello mix given by program coordinator; the taffy was for the Great Salt Lake, the honey for the state motto of industry (as in busy like a bee), and the Jello because Salt Lake City consumes more Jello per capita than any place in the world.
2 -- number of drunken assholes noted in SLC airport waiting to board plane to Phoenix
1 -- number of drunken assholes seated next to me during flight
16 -- estimated number of tequila shots said drunken asshole had consumed prior to boarding flight based on the smell emanating from him
4 -- number of little Jack Daniels bottles served to drunken asshole by flight attendant during flight
7 -- minutes from touchdown in Phoenix until scheduled liftoff of my flight to Dallas
188 -- beats per minute of my heart after sprinting to gate A2 to catch my flight to Dallas
38 -- minutes spent sitting in the plane waiting for takeoff to Dallas with no word from crew as to source of the delay
3 -- crying babies on plane waiting for takeoff
0 -- amount of fun had by me waiting for takeoff
infinity -- amount of joy experienced by me at getting in to the car with my wife and baby to go home
