I can't even begin to express how much I love green tea with mint, my newest Kroger discovery. Mmmmmm. I've been trying to stop taking sugar with my tea, and the mint gives it an extra kick which more than compensates for the lack of sugar.

I was working in the ED for most of the day; at one point a family member of a patient asked a nurse for the doctor who had seen them earlier. "It's the Oriental one," she said co-conspiratorially. Ugh. If I do end up becoming a physician, I wonder what my distinguishing characteristic will be? The kinda-Oriental kinda-Hispanic kinda-Native American looking one? The short female one? I understand that most people use race as a distinguishing characteristic of strangers, because it's what they first notice, what first registers in their brains...but what to do with someone who may be racially ambiguous like myself? I wonder if they'll still grope blindly after a plausible racial identity they could assign for me, or whether they'll choose another default characteristic (as they might choose with a white person, who of course does not register as having a race...does anyone say "I want to see that white doctor over there?" No, they'll say, "the guy with a mustache" or "the real tall guy" or "the blond girl"). I know I may be overly sensitive about this sort of thing, but it still bugs. I'm still surprised by how often I hear the word "Oriental"...I suppose those who don't regularly interact with Asians wouldn't realize how offensive it can be.