Currently Listening O By Damien Rice see related

Maybe

Currently Watching Little Miss Sunshine By Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Chuck Loring, Robert O'Connor (IV), Steven Christopher Parker, Erik David, Alissa Anderegg, Matt Winston, Justin Shilton, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Jennessa Rose, Jerry Giles, Mark Kubr, Grant Hayes, Lindsey Jordan, Alan Arkin, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Cassandra Ashe see related

Let's just say that last week was insane, and not completely in a good way either.  A lot of crap happened and we'll leave it at that.  A good thing is that on Friday I got to assist in surgery.  That was awesome.  I was seconds from passing out, or maybe I did a little bit.  The surgeon grabbed my arm and said, "Are you okay!?!"  I remember it feeling really abrupt, almost like being woken up.  Luckily I did not fall.  I was "scrubbed in" which means everything I did and touched was supposed to be sterile so falling would have been very bad, on top of being embarassing. 

Right now everyone here is stressed out.  I know fall break will be much appreciated.  I can't believe it is almost here already.  I will sleep and try my hardest to do as little thinking as possible.  It's 3:33 and I better get to work.  Oh yeah, Little Miss Sunshine was  a really fun movie, ok somewhat dark but very funny.   

Currently Listening Foiled By Blue October see related

Why can't things just be spelled right? P-A-C-K not PAK

In accordance with the rest of the week, it has indeed been a strange weekend.  Friday was awesome.  I got to see a surgery and the surgeons were really nice!  They were teaching me all about the anatomy and why the woman needed to have the surgery.  I didn't even pass out (or feel like I was going to) as I feared that I would.  It can be an intimidating thing to see a person's insides.  I have come close before to passing out (very close) and it is embarassing to say the least.  This time I did well and even enjoyed the OR.  Maybe a seven year residency awaits me.  After the OR we went to labor and delivery where I got to hold a baby boy who was only about 10 hours old.  He just slept in my arms and we hung out.  It was a great time.  The evening was capped off with a maragarita at b-dubbs and a very strange Nicholas Cage movie, a wonderful day in all. 

Saturday and Sunday were far less exciting, the normal studying, but also an excess of waiting.  Waiting for people to call, trying to decide whether to wait for them or to make new plans, the kind of waiting that makes you feel a bit stupid.  I got a lot of work done and had some much needed down time, two things that should make this next week better.  The week before exams I think is required to suck. The really nice thing though, is that seeing those couple patients on Friday helped me remember why I am doing all of this, why I didn't do something else with my life.  I want to be a doctor and that is what I am going to do, even if it means being married to my books for one week out of three for the next few years.   It's worth it. 

I got a new cd too.  It's now September and I am on a new month's budget! :)

Currently Reading Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fourth Edition By Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter see related

ARF has its own GEF, of course

(that is something I learned in class today. don't ask me what it means because then I would have to tell you and you would probably start crying from boredom)

Anyway, this has been the longest week of the semester so far.  It hasn't even really been a bad week, but it has just been long.  Even Monday I was sure it was at least Wednesday or Thursday.  I was supposed to go see some babies be born today, but apparently none wanted to be born so I stayed home instead.  I watched two episodes of Grey's Anatomy.  Maybe that's some sick form of substitute.  This week is just blah, no post-exam excitment nor pre-exam stress.  I am sure next week I will be longing for the blah of this week instead of the insanity that awaits me, but for now it's...blah.  This weekend I need to work hard two days and take one day (mabye even completely) off.  Many people are leaving for the weekend.  I am not.  It will be nice just to relax between studying. 

I was in the public library today preparing for tomorrow's lecture and just before I left, I made my way into the young adult fiction section.  It is remarkable what I feel in this place, just wandering around and skimming feels almost as though I am having adventures along with the characters on the backs of the books.  Yes, I know I am a medical student (la ti da), I should be reading classics or great current authors, but forget that.  If I am going to read for fun.  I want it to be fun.  I don't want to look up every third word in a dictionary or miss the sentiment of the story because I didn't look things up.  And, good authors write YA too.  I don't have a library card and even if I did, I probably should be reading "The Molecular Biology of the Cell" instead.  Oh well... Know what else is funny, I have only read two books for fun in the past few years, though I aspire to read more. 

I don't know.   It is a weird day and a weird week.  Hopefully there will be football tomororw.  That would be fun. 

I now officially have a white coat.  It feels more like being part of a club than anything else.  Of course we are the "new members" who will be stuck with all the crap jobs for the next 4 to 7 years, but they welcome us nonetheless.  Maybe the coolest part of the weekend is that my parents came.  They were supposed to be in Ottawa celebrating a relative's birthday, which would have been fun I imagine, but instead they canceled and decided to come for parents' weekend.  It was cool to show them around, though it felt a bit like kindergarden.  I remember my nephew taking us to his open house and showing us where he hung his coat, where storytime was and which were his favorite toys.  It was very similar to that except my coatrack is called a "community" and storytime is a state of the art lecture hall and my toy is a computer man who can live or die depending on which procedures you do on him and how well you do them.  It was fun introducing my parents to the people I met only a month ago and remembering how awkward it was meeting them and being glad that it is much less awkward now.  Seeing siblings of my classmates was funny.  So many of them look just like their brothers/sisters and they walk, talk and act just like them too.  It was almost like having clones of my class.  We went on a "boat cruise" on Saturday night that took us out on Lake Michigan to see the skyline from the lake.  It actually was quite beautiful even though I am not usually as impressed by man-made creations as I am by nature.  We wondered at some point during the night why we had been calling it a "boatcruise" the whole time.  Usually when you go on a cruise it is just called a cruise or maybe a dinner cruse or booze cruise, but no we are special and like to be extra specific.  It is boat cruse.

Today I am dragging my parents to the largest triathlon in the world.  I really want to do this trialthlon next year so I figure it is a good idea to see how it all works.  I hope the train and all the walking that I am used to isn't too much for my parents.  I think they will be okay.  If all else fails, we can always take a cab.  It should be fun.  I hope it doesn't storm!