I’ve been meaning to thank Deepu for giving me a list of some cool podcasts to check out. My commute is about 30 minutes each way, and listening to podcasts I enjoy helps keep me sane. I added the Moth Podcast, NPR Selected Shorts, and RadioLab to my podcast list and have been enjoying all of them. NPR Shorts is my favorite of the bunch. It’s usually 2 short stories being read live somewhere in NYC. I love short stories. I thought I loved them because they’re short. Reading a novel just takes too much devotion sometimes. But there’s something more than that, too. I just love how a good short story starts with a simple premise or a few simple characters and then draws you in, so that within a minute, you feel completely involved.

I was running today even though I didn’t want to. I figured I’d just go around the block, maybe a mile. I strapped my nano Ipod to my arm and started off, feeling completely unmotivated. A minute of slow jogging later and I was deeply engrossed in a great story about a middle-aged long distance runner in NYC who jogs back to her old neighborhood and gets accosted by the new neighborhood kids living there. I couldn’t stop now! So instead of turning right, I turned left and took the long way home. (Well… 3 miles long).

Podcasts - they’ll make you healthier!

Kavi has been getting bored being surrounded by adults all the time. He is very happy to announce that a sibling is on its way. We’re calling it blueberry. If things go on schedule, blueberry will be born sometime in June, so we’ll have 2 June babies, a couple years apart.

Pregnancy has been uneventful, unless you count those recurrent waves of nausea and vomiting that Mala’s been experiencing. Hopefully that will get better as we move into the second trimester.

Blueberry 12 wks

For the remaining 2 readers of kurup.org (one of them being me), let me apologize for the lack of posts here over the past couple years. I have always meant to write more, but most of my writing seems to consist of apologies for not writing, short bursts of writing, and then long stretches of inactivity. We are nearing the end of a long stretch of inactivity now, so it’s time for the apologies.

A part of my apprehension has always been that someone will read my writing and laugh at how ridiculous I am. How could I possibly take myself seriously? Yes, I am quite self conscious. But, I figure that now that I’ve posted just about nothing for the past year, anyone left here is going to be pretty forgiving of what I write.

So, I hereby announce my plan to start writing blog posts again. I don’t know what exactly I’ll write about, but I don’t think there will be much focus. Whatever I’m happening to think about will become the new focus of kurup.org.

Kavi is now 18 months old. He loves to sing, dance and make art. He has about 25 words that he says, although you have to be his father or mother to understand most of them. To my delight, he loves to sit in my lap just before bedtime and listen to me read stories. His favorite at the moment is a book called “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.” It’s a silly book that has a repeating theme with the words “Uh oh” and “Oh no!” at regular, predictable places in the story. And whenever I get to those words, Kavi sings them back to me as only a toddler can. “Uh ooooooooh!” and “Nu nooooo!”. I’m actually going to miss these days once he’s speaking coherently someday…

Work has been getting better. I’ve been at DRH for over a year now and I’m starting to feel more comfortable as a hospitalist. I have much more confidence in my gut feelings than I did a year ago. Medicine, however, is always humbling, so whenever you start feeling comfortable, you can almost guarantee that something is going to blindside you and make you re-evaluate your thought processes and assumptions. I had a case like that the other day, which I’m not going to go into at the moment, since it’s too fresh and I haven’t had time to figure out what lessons I need to learn from it yet. On the whole, though, I am feeling better about work. I’ve even volunteered to lead a project to institute online progress notes (Electronic Medical Records) at the hospital. This, to me, is scary. There are so many things that can go wrong with any computerization project in healthcare and this is one that I badly want to go right. If there are any people who have been through this process before, I would love to hear from you.

PS. Thanks Mark

We had a few friends over tonight for our first little get-together in our house. Mala made homemade pizza and cake. I provided moral support :-) Everyone had a great time. There were 4 little kiddos and 1 infant, which made for some craziness, but everyone left in good health. It’s a treat to watch Kavi interact with other kids. He’s a real observer. He sits back and watches what everyone is doing. While the other kids were running like crazy around the house, Kavi was content to sit on the carpet and watch them scream. He was pretty tired since he had taken an early nap, so maybe that was part of it. He also seemed happy to watch the other kids play with all of his toys. I mean, sometimes he would try to grab a toy that another kid was playing with, but for the most part, he didn’t seem to care. When we finally cleaned up and got him ready for bed, it was nearly 10 PM. He fell asleep while I was singing a lullaby to him. He woke up for a minute when I put him down, but that was it. He was tired!

OK, I know it’s been almost a year since I updated this blog, but rest assured that I’m still alive and kicking. The observant among you will notice that the design of the blog has changed. The even more observant will notice that huge swaths of content are now missing. Things like my photo albums, my running log, old comments, and Kavi’s little site are now gone. They may make a reappearance someday, especially if I get prodded sufficiently. I have my old site running locally on my laptop, but I’m too lazy to bring it all back right now.

If you’re just interested in pics of Kavi (and I know that’s most of you), go visit my Picasa photo album.

Cathy Sarisky, who had so kindly hosted kurup.org for a few years now, has decided to exit the web hosting business. I took the opportunity to scale down my web operations a bit. This blog is now powered by WordPress instead of OpenACS. I’m hoping that “outsourcing” the tech stuff to WordPress will allow me to focus more on writing stuff, rather than tweaking settings. Hold me to it! I’ve stolen the design for this blog from diveintomark. I’ve always enjoyed his writing and his design sense. I hope he doesn’t mind.

So much has changed since my last post. Kavi has just continued to grow and amaze us. I know for a fact that he is the most adorable little boy in the universe. He’s gotten even more adorable now that he sleeps through the night (as of the past month!). We’ve moved into a house for the first time in our adult lives. We are now residents of Chapel Hill, NC. We’re living the American Dream. I’m going to skip right over the whole purchase process which was more nightmarish than it should have been thanks to some very difficult sellers. Since moving in, we’ve replaced a missing toilet tank, shampooed carpets, changed locks, and hired painters, landscapers, electricians, pest control people, gutter cleaners and house cleaners. Almost makes you want to move back into an apartment. :-)

I started work as a hospitalist last September, and I’m starting to get into a groove now. It was quite a shock to switch from outpatient, academic practice to inpatient, private practice. At times, I still feel like a resident, but for the most part, I find this job to be much more rewarding intellectually and spiritually. It’s more exhausting than I thought it would be, though. I can’t see myself working this kind of schedule for the rest of my life. So, as always, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do when I grow up.

Well, enough rambling for my first post back. Hope to speak to y’all soon (That’s the southerner in me now!)

There are more videos on my youtube page and I’m uploading pics as often as I can at Kavi’s Photo Album. UPDATE: I’m outsourcing photo management now. Go to Picasa

And here’s his first video.

Mala and I are so proud to announce the birth of our healthy, happy baby boy!

His name is Kavi Puri Kurup and he was born at 11:28 AM on June 6th, 2007. He is 6lbs, 8.5oz and 19 inches long.

Kavi

Let’s also get caught up with my investments. I last updated in May 2006 when I bought STS, JAX, EEI, KEYN and RSC.

At my next quarterly evaluation in August 2006, I sold DSWL at a loss of 16.7% because I had held it for 2 years and it no longer met my criteria for a stock I would want to buy. I bought SYPR and BSET.

In November 2006, I sold SEMI because it reported a negative quarter on top of negative trailing 12 month earnings. I sold it at $3.02, for a 42.8% loss, just a few days before SEMI announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and dropped to $0.28. Sometimes you get lucky. I bought SGC, IAL, FLXS, CULS, PRCP, and PARL.

In February of 2007, I sold KEYN for a 18.9% gain and SYPR for a 22% loss because both reported a negative quarter on top of 12 month negative earnings. I sold SRT for a 16.2% loss because it was such a small portion of my portfolio and it didn’t meet my buy criteria. I sold COBR for a 23.9% gain and PATK for a 16.7% gain because I’d held both for 2 years, but they no longer met my buy criteria. I bought AIRT, HDNG, AWX, CAV, and JCTCF.

In April/May 2007, IAL got bought out for a 16.8% gain and BL got bought out for a 11.0% gain. I sold JCS for a 21.4% gain because they had fallen behind multiple quarters in their filings. I bought PMRY, POP and HOOK. POP dropped about 40% on the day that I bought it. Sometimes you get unlucky.

Here’s how the rest of my portfolio is doing as of May 31st, 2007.

Attention Wisconsin Family Members:

Midwest Airlines is restarting direct flights from Milwaukee to Raleigh-Durham.

Just FYI :-)