Follow Ups!

1- Did I get through my Sunday to do list?

ALMOST. I think I did everything except for G’s room organization (her books). It was ~4 pm, I was DEEP into Fellowship Point, and I made the executive decision to sit on the couch and finish it rather than do the organizing. (She was not excited about it either).

I am still determined to get through her room in October like I got through C’s in September, but have just adjusted the timeline. Next Saturday will be go time (I’m not on call this weekend and we are headed to the Keys for a bit, but not until Saturday late afternoon which means that day is actually perfect for some focused room time).

2- FELLOWSHIP POINT = DONE!

I don’t usually feel like I have to push myself to finish books, because truthfully if it feels that hard I generally abandon. (At least this year I have!). BUT I did like this book, and wanted to find out how it ended, I enjoyed the writing style, I enjoyed the character development and the strong sense of place.

I just didn’t always like reading it. There were parts that just made me sleepy. I am not sure it needed to be 579 pages, you know?

That said, I really enjoyed the perspective of the two main characters (both in their 80s!) and I liked the ending despite the fact that Jenny told me some people do not (she liked it too!). It was also fun to text Jenny while the story unfolded (fun fact: somehow Kae was on that text chain — because it started with us sharing pictures of cozy fall things — so she may have gotten some spoilers – sorry Kae!).

I’m reading The Shampoo Effect next because it’s a non-renewable library book. Onward!

3- I have a cardiac monitor on and it’s apparently supposed to stay on for 14 days. I usually do little quick ones but I guess my EP wanted to get a broader perspective (seek out runs of sneaky VT I guess?).

I’ve had a lot of skipped beats/bigeminy (basically when PVCs/ventricular beats alternate with regular beats – not acutely life threatening but feels terrible) so trying to quantify and figure out if I need a med adjustment.

4- CALL IS UNDERWAY. I am sure things will get busier but today has been totally fine (I’m writing this mid-day Monday for publication Tuesday morning so maybe we’ve gotten 3598734 consults since I hit publish, but hey — at least I got to enjoy part of one day that wasn’t too busy). Just 3 nights on this week (I’m on full days, but have night coverage Tuesday & Friday). Then I’ll be on next Tuesday & the following Friday-Sunday weekend. THIS is how I like to take call! Determined to continues spitting up as many weeks as I can.

5- I thought this was a great ep: An Unlikely Team Tackles AI Brainrot. Helped me understand some things about the current AI conversation, AND I agree with all of the practical tactics he mentioned, which included

• Use AI for tedious things, not to do the hard things. I love using it for creating planning documents but it’s my calculator, not my decision maker. I remain the one in charge of what I want to do, how long I think it will take, and which hard landscape elements must be included. This is very different from giving the tool access to your calendar, your email, and your task manager and just prompting it: “Hey! What should I do today?” (not saying anyone here is doing this, but I think this is a nuanced space and preserving autonomy and the ability to think deeply about what we actually WANT is important

• Don’t use AI to write // any time an LLM is used to express anything it should be noted as such, otherwise it is dishonest / emotionally manipulative. Yep, hard agree.

• Make sure you are READING things that are not AI summaries of other things. Yes, there could be the occasional summary of some big document where you need to capture the main ideas, but this should be the exception not the default.

There were some other ideas mentioned in the paper discussed in the episode, but I liked these the best.

All right, onward + upward. And a fun concert tonight! I want to hear all of the super old ’90s Weezer though I also liked OK Human a lot!