April 24, 2026

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I knew there would be more blog traffic since the KPBS segment but I wasn’t sure how much! Did you find my blog? Did you enter into my stream of consciousness? Now you know what I actually think about! I told one of my younger colleagues that I used to have imaginary friends when I was younger. It was mostly during the time of what I recall as silence where I think I was learning English by immersion (I mostly spoke Vietnamese when I was younger), but was plopped into American school. I just remember silence during those years and then suddenly knew English. I believe during that time I had a lot of imaginary friends.

So welcome my blog friends! Which are somewhere in between real friends and imaginary friends. But I truly know that you are earthly/green friends.

I did so much climate work the last few days. I was mostly trying to enjoy our daughter’s prom photos, so didn’t post too much. But I delivered my first talk at Kaiser Medical School which went well. I’m now connected with their instructors and will get on the list of scholarly projects that senior medical students can work with. I got on KPBS thanks to the amazing Tammy Murga. It was the segment that I think really reflects the real me. My meandering way I do climate work. What it didn’t capture is how project oriented I am, which you can see better my looking at my doximity profile or LinkNed. Not sure why I even keep on updating that stuff. Most people are on LinkNed these days. Is that how you spell it? It’s like a middle aged person’s Instagram.

The videos from H3SD 2025 were edited and uploaded on our YouTube channel, so you can watch those lectures! I need to transfer the payment to the young person who did the editing. It was $820 and took them 14 hours to edit. I’m going to rightly deduct that as a business expense. All the summit work is mostly volunteer drive and we all just kind of chip in, and this is my family’s way of chipping in.

We also met regarding the NRDC Nitrogen Fertilizer Reduction Act project which is going AMAZINGLY WELL! If you know Anna Northrup MS4 from UCSD School of Medicine, she is AMAZING! It’s been so wonderful to work with her. We have a super strong team and I’m happy to support the passionate premeds who are working on the project.

Again, lots of climate projects and legislative work. But I mostly wanted to come onto the blog this morning and tell you a sheepish “HELLO!” Thanks for looking at the blog! I’m going to try to start plogging more again, since I’ve been outed as plogger and blogger. I think that’s really niche, being a plogger and a blogger? It rhymes! I took the day off to watch our daughter do her final emerging leaders day with San Diego Girl Scouts. She is selected as an EMCEE this year, so the grandparents and I are attending. Then she gets to do senior things with her friends, and we head off to Cambridge this weekend for Harvard Admit weekend. I had at some point hoarded up 80 vacation days when I was a younger physician, but now I’m down to the mid 20s and so used those days wisely over the last few years to spend time with my own children (and do climate work). I don’t actually get any time officially to do all these projects, which is OK. It’s an existential crisis so using some of my vacation days before was my choice because I wanted to do my part to save the planet and climate for our children.

Thank you for wandering over to my blog! It’s kind of a mess but it works and it makes me happy. I hope maybe it made you smile for a bit – which is honestly enough! if you are a patient, do not worry! I am going to finish all my charts and get to all my messages today. The truth is that most doctors have to do that, work on our vacation days to catch up. That’s just the reality of being a doctor.