Myung and I travelled back to 1996 and found ourselves surrounded by a lot of empty seats.

With small groups cancelled for the summer, and the church softball game not worth the drive, Myung and I decided to go over to the Taste of Chicago. Neither us of were all that excited about the typically overpriced food and oversized crowds, but there are free daily concerts, and we still had fond memories of John Mayer from a few years ago.

The weather was spectacular, so we walked the mile or so from my place. We stopped by and ate at a Subway along the way to try to minimize the prodigality of the outing. Once we got to the Taste, we headed directly for the Petrillo Music Shell, and to my surprise, we were able to find a pretty good spot in the actual seating area.

Lovehammer - or as Myung called them, The Lovehammers - was playing, and we just sat and enjoyed the sun for a while. And even though the time for the main act was nearing and the promoters were encouraging people on the lawn to move up to the seating area, the place was maybe half full. Then to lukewarm cheers came The Wallflowers.

I'm sure not too many Tasters remembered, and probably even fewer cared, but The Wallflowers were kind of a big deal back in the day, even if only for a year or two. They won Grammys, they had a song on a big movie soundtrack, they were hip. Then Britney and the boy bands happened, and mainstream hip-hop happened, and all of a sudden, The Wallflowers become the wallflowers.

They played a bunch of songs, with only a couple of recognizable ones in the mix. People were bored. I was bored. I didn't know whether these were old songs or new songs, but they all sounded the same, like a bunch of b-sides from my freshman year of college. Everyone was getting antsy, and there were even a few calls from the crowd for "One Headlight." They didn't fight it, and played the song, probably for the millionth time, to the most enthusiastic response of the night.

And I couldn't help but feel a little sad, like I could almost identify with them, that there was a point in the past when things had been really, really good, and part of us was stuck there while the world had moved on.

Myung and I left immediately afterward. We bought a couple of things to munch on, and walked back to my place. We were walking in a crowd as we left the Taste, but little by little, we shed everyone until we neared my building alone, a couple of wallflowers down by the water, telling riddles in the dark.

My intern year is coming to a close. It's kind of like the end of freshman year. I now know where the rooms are, I sit at the right table in the cafeteria, and soon there will be a new batch of kids coming to take my place at the bottom of the totem pole. I'll have my pennies ready.

I suppose I should be thankful that I survived the year without directly killing anyone, as far as I know. Hmm, there's a lot of hedging going on in that last sentence. In fact, there's still two days left. Let's not jinx it now. Forget I even mentioned it.

I'm currently on the Colorectal service at the U, which means it's all feces all the time. My first rotation of second year is Colorectal at County because I apparently could not get enough. My advice to you? Fiber.

And today I had Father's Day dinner with the family. The dinner was fine, everyone is doing well, and, for the first time in a long time, no one was stressed, mostly because my sister had a good deep tendon reflex. But there I go again, speaking of things better left alone for now.

All in good time, says the wise fool.

I'm in the middle of a three-week stretch without a day off and I'm tired. The weekdays blur into weekends and I've been trying to squeeze in a personal life when I can. We've had multiple work-related social outings the past few weeks, which are a nice change of pace, but it hasn't helped with the perpetually-at-work feeling, or with the perpetually-sleep-deprived feeling, for that matter. I met up with Bekah and the other ex-BYGers for Jon's graduation lunch and extended it into a movie, where I got carded - a ridiculous combination of hanging out with kids and white people's inability to judge Asian aging.

I keep missing things. Richie is getting married on Saturday, which I have to miss because I'm on call. I haven't been to church in a month or so. I think I missed Joyce's baby shower. I'm sure I'm missing things that I don't even know I'm missing.

Bekah was talking about how she went through a tough time this past year, when she was struggling with balancing classes and working and her Christian group. She's wanted to be a doctor forever, but she started thinking that maybe she would have to give up her dream. She still hasn't, but she's comfortable with the thought that God will lead her where He wants. I hope that she will persevere through the moments of doubt and the testing of her spirit, and find herself purified by the fire.