The most chocolate-y birthday ever

Man, I need to stop slacking off on this blog, especially since I have stuff to report. Yes, there is actually stuff going on that I can talk about AND it doesn't include dead people. This should be a relief for those of you who don't like hearing about how I like to throw around human hearts. Er, well there may be some dead people stuff. . .I won't lie.

Anyway, last week was all kinds of crazy. It was my birthday on Tuesday, and considering I was away from all my family and friends, it actually kinda turned out pretty well. Mostly because everyone remembered my birthday, which made me happy. But also because my mama sent me my favorite chocolate cake, which she made herself. Just the smell of it made me happy. . .but also the eating of it. Lots of eating.

The fact that I had a major exam on Friday kinda sorta dampened the happiness a bit. I hit a wall on Wednesday where my brain and body revolted and refused to study anymore, I had a massive headache, and there was much general frustration. However, I studied all of Thursday and basically took the test all of Friday, which was awful. The test was hard. And I kinda gave up on life, so in between tests I ran errands instead of studying, which actually made me feel better. Buying a bottle of vodka right before a histo exam really kinda makes everything ok.

Yeah, so Friday was on it's way to major sucking, except for the fact that Sami and Amanda flew in Friday night to visit. Yay! And they brought with them copious amounts of dark chocolate from Scharffenberger. Drool. The pile of chocolate sitting on my night stand is basically the sexiest thing ever.

Anyway, I think I actually did a halfway decent job of showing them the city considering I never go out. We went to Grant Park and saw Millenium Park and the bean/Cloud Gate.

The bean is surprisingly awesome considering it's just a giant metal bean. It's soo shiny.

We did some shopping and went to the Signature Lounge in the 96th floor of the Hancock Building on Saturday night, which was neat. The drinks weren't great and the dessert sucked (we actually sent back chocolate cake, it was that bad), but the view was fucking spectacular. And the elevator ride was slightly frightening. It was really fast. Too fast for hurtling up a 1000 foot structure.

On Sunday evening we took the architectural boat tour, which was really pretty at nighttime. It was a pretty enjoyable tour until we got to the lake. It was fucking freezing out on the lake and I kinda wanted to die a little bit. However, we toughed it out in the warm cabin below and made it back to land safe and incredibly hungry. We basically found the nearest pub and ate our little hearts out there.

Monday was less eventful because I had class. But I did show Sami and Amanda my dead body. They seemed to enjoy it.

Over all it was a really really fun weekend. Considering we were all staying in my tiny apartment, and no one got bitch-slapped, I'd say it went well. It was nice to hang out, chat and play some guitar hero. God I love guitar hero. . .and my friends. You guys are cool too. :)

Dinners, parties, tests, wtf?

So, I'm going a little nuts. I have a test next friday, and there's just so much fucking material I want gouge out my eyes. I did manage to have some fun this weekend, which kinda makes up for this stress nonsense, I guess.

I'm doing this Alzheimer's buddy program thing where people working in the neurology department match volunteers with a newly diagnosed Alzheimer's patient. The idea is that the person with Alzheimer's has someone they can go out and do things with (movies, museums, etc.) and the student gets to do something good and gain some new experiences. I was matched with a woman that was described as spunky, sophisticated and fun. I was supposed to meet her on Friday, so I got kinda dolled up (it happens rarely nowadays) to make a good impression. She actually didn't make it out, but apparently my dressing up seemed to make a good impression on people in my class. . .maybe? I ran into a girl I know from one of my classes at the grocery store and she invited me out to dinner at a Thai restaurant that night, which was fun. There was much joking and laughter, and we all know how much I like laughter.

On Saturday night, one of my friends that lives in my building invited me for homecooked Ethiopian food because her husband was in town, so she cooked. Man, that was so good. Like I didn't really realize how deprived my diet has been lately. I just kinda switch off between pasta and vegetarian chili every day. It kinda makes me sad. So you damn well better believe I ate my little heart out.

Then, I was kinda cajoled into going to the big halloween party at one of the penthouses nearby. It's a really cool place that's super gothic looking for some reason, and it's been passed down to Northwestern med students for a whole bunch of years. It started out ok, there was some awkward standing around in corners with the people I went with commenting on how we don't really know anybody. And then everybody proceeded to get plastered. I got drinks spilled on me repeatedly (like at least 4-5 times). Girls were kinda out of control and I somehow was put in charge of making sure they didn't embarrass themselves, or die or something. It was great. And I'm not being sarcastic because I was really hammered. I wasn't stupid drunk, but it was enough that I was having a fine time on my own. Yay alcohol. Except for the hangover, but watching movies all day in bed was great, so there's a silver lining to everything.

That's all. Oh, I have a test next week. . .I'm freaking out. Have I mentioned this before? :)

Indiana Jones lies

Dude, it's only been one week of anatomy, and I've already done some crazy stuff to my dead person. It's nuts. It's also a lot of fun, which is weird. There are definitely times when I just kinda think about how weird it is that I'm cutting up a person in the morning and then doing normal things, like going grocery shopping or doing my laundry later on in the day. Which is why no one outside of med school should ever ask me how my day is going on anatomy lab days. They'll regret it. But I'll share here because I think it's kinda awesome.

We started out studying the back. So we had to open up the back. Which meant taking off the skin and looking at the muscles underneath. We basically skinned the dude. It turns out I have a mild allergic reaction to the solution they fix the cadaver in, so as I'm skinning away, my eyes started burning and watering exactly like they would if I were cutting an onion. Not that I'm comparing my cadaver to an onion. . .but it is kinda funny. . .

Anyway, after that we got to look at the spinal cord. To get to the spinal cord however, we had to hammer and chisel away the spine. . .which is a suprisingly good way to get out aggression. The spinal cord is actually really pretty. And it's very appropriately named because it looks like a thick cord with smaller cords running out of it. That's what controls most movements and sensations. . .a simple looking cord. I thought that was neat.

Yesterday, we took out the heart and dissected it. It was actually a lot of work because we had to take the skin and muscles off, then take out the ribcage, cut out the lungs and then cut out the heart. There's no way in hell the dude from Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom could seduce out the heart, or whatever it was he did. No freaking way. Our guy actually had a really big, muscular heart the size of a small football. . . so we naturally pretended to throw it at, er, to each other. Heh. The heart is also really pretty with all its different chambers and vessels and whatnot. Yeah that's right. I'm talking about a human heart. I have to keep reminding myself that. I know what your heart looks like. . .God that's so cool.

Anyway, not much else is happening outside of school. I'm still trying to find a life of sorts. You know, one that's not too demanding, possibly involves free food and doesn't judge me because I cut up dead people during the day. Anything along those lines would be awesome.

I can make awesome baked potatoes. . .yeah that's right

Man, it's been a hell of a long time since I've posted anything. I used to be so good at writing every three days. . .and then my life got boring/incredibly busy with school.

I went home last weekend, which was super-exciting. I did dinner and costco shopping with my mama (I am a college student after all). We then went home and relaxed. I played with my cat and she apparently had missed me quite a bit because she wouldn't leave me alone. Here's a pic of the little fatfat.

Look at the belly! Sooo cute and furry and bear-like. :) On Friday night, she came and slept with me. She somehow managed to find a nook on my shoulder and slept there, thus pinning me down and making me completely immobile for the rest of the night. But at least she was soft and warm. . .that makes up for anything.

I then spent Saturday running around and hanging out with people. I did dinner in the city and drinks with Dina. I realized how much I miss San Francisco. For some reason, it never seemed overwhelming and crazy to me, although it should have. Chicago on the other hand is pretty overwhelming and crazy. I don't know why. Then we headed over to Berkeley for Sami's party, yay party!

Overall that weekend was really great. I really miss hanging out with all you guys. . .stupid moving. But I also really needed that weekend at home. Being around the people I love even for a few hours was really really refreshing.

So I managed to get back to my place around midnight on Sunday night and do an hour of reading for monday then go to sleep. That basically set the tone for the rest of the week. I was running around all week doing all kinds of nonsense. It was super busy. But I survived and I'm spending the weekend catching up on work. I did make myself the most awesome baked potato ever after watching Tyler Florence make it while I was at home. Behold, the yummiest baked potato ever.


And, I also got another view:

There are actually two baked potatoes because Trader Joe's didn't have normal potatoes for baking. I made a white cheese sauce and added the broccoli in there. It is possibly the most delicious thing I have ever made. Drooool.

Other than that. . .I don't have a whole lot going on. I start anatomy on Monday, and we got to see our dead person on Wednesday. I will be cutting up a rather large, but not particularly fat dude. Should be interesting.

Spiderman - not so yummy

This week was mostly pretty quiet with my being sick and all, but now I'm better and things are getting back to normal. I have my first exam on Friday, and already I'm tired of studying for it. Not that I've been really studying for it. We have had 36 lectures already, so I've spent most of my time catching up on those. And then I'll have to go back and review them all over again. Considering I have a week and it's all material I'm pretty familiar with, I'm not all that worried. . .I'm just annoyed at the amount of material.

Anyway, our college mentor had a party for us on Friday night. I didn't realize it was optional as there were a few people who didn't show up. They made it seem pretty mandatory. The first 20 minutes were pretty excruciatingly painful. Apparently, I'm a grown up now, so all conversations will consist of grown-up things or be about school. I don't think you could have counted the number of ways I imagined hurting people until they stopped talking. On the other hand, I also don't like talking about stupid things I equate with high school. It's kind of a fine line.

Unacceptable topics of conversation include: 1. Grey's Anatomy - just because I'm going to be a doctor doesn't mean I like this show, in fact I find it insufferable. Apparently women are now ok with being stereotyped as illogical, highly emotional twits. Thanks Grey's. 2. School - We're all there together 24/7, seeing and doing the same things, do we really need to keep talking about it? 3. Who's hot - There's a list of the hottest guys and girls in the class made by people who went through facebook and ranked everybody. . .this is fucking worse than high school.

Acceptable topics of conversation: 1. Anything that ends with a joke or set up for a joke. 2. Good TV, like The Office, which generally ends up with trading funny lines from the show. 3. Funny stories. . .Basically anything that's not particularly serious and ends up in much laughter wins with me.

The one cool thing about the party was that our mentor dude stopped an ice cream truck and bought us all ice cream. It was the greatest thing ever. I got the Spiderman ice cream bar. . .which turned out to be the most sugar-y, artificial color filled ice cream bar ever. About half way through the bar I started getting really jittery from all the sugar, so I stopped eating it. It was still pretty awesome though.

I'm literally not believing how soon I'm coming home. Since I'll be flying out right after my exam, I have to get trashed on the plane (life is so hard). My brother already filled me in on the proper way to do so, and one of the rare cool girls in my class is flying out with me. So this should be fun.

My hot pot and me

I'm sick. I blame it on the fact that for the past two nights, my body decided I shouldn't sleep well. I woke up roughly each hour wondering "Why? With the tossing and the turning? Mother of god whyyy??" And then there is the fact that I was eating two meals a day because I've been busy and stuff. I still blame my body. I went to Walgreens and picked up a hot pot, tea and cough drops. For some stupid reason I forgot tylenol. By the time I realized that I'm a giant idiot, I was in bed and not getting up again. So yeah, go me. I'm going to be a doctor.

Anyway, I'm taking my first exam next week (thankfully the material this week's been easy, so I'm not that far behind), and then I'M COMING HOME!! So fucking excited sweet baby jesus i'm coming back to California! I miss California. I sometimes forget I'm not there anymore. Stupid moving.

Yup, that's about all I've got right now. Hopefully this stupid cold goes away soon and I'll be able to take a breath without wanting to rip off my nose.

Monday mornings