Yeah, so not much new has happened lately. I'm really excited about my trip to New Orleans and back home. I fly back to the bay march 31 and i fly back out an april 6. Never fear though, I already booked tickets back home for two weeks in june 4-16. muahahaha.

That's really all there is to report. I've spent the past 4 days in the library studying...literally. Like I've spent all day, generally until around 10pm, studying if I'm not in class. I kinda hate life right now. Just a little bit.

Also, just as a side note, we finished anatomy lab for good today. I must say, it was incredibly interesting and cool that we got to see so much of the body (it really is neat), but man, we did some fucked up stuff to that person. It's really kinda amazing that people donate their bodies for this, because we really do learn a lot, but at the same time it's probably not my ideal way to go. I'm still mixed about how I feel about it, I guess. It's probably better than just putting your body in the ground and having it waste away, or burning it down to ashes. I guess at least this way some people get something out of it.

Yup, that's all for now. I should go study...or sleep. blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg.

Still waiting for spring

So, these past couple of weeks have been completely uneventful. I don't think I'm handling med school very well, but at this point I'm just kind of waiting for the year to be over. I've been studying a lot, at least until I got sick over the weekend, then I just played a lot of video games. Otherwise there's really been no sign of life. I'm forming friendships, which is good. But I find that there are very few people (namely two) I can see every day and in the relatively stressful environment that is school...and not want to cut their throats. I realize I should be humble because people probably feel that way about me, but seeing the same people every day just drives me a little crazy.

Operation: Find Friends Outside of Med School has also been put on hold for a while now, at least until it's warm enough to go outside and do things. It's weird too, like I think I've reached the point where I need attention. I feel like I've been so deprived of any sort of excitement or just anything mildly interesting, that this is leading to increasing pessimism. Because that's how I do things. It's way easier to be pessimistic than proactive. Granted, I don't really think I want to be proactive in this state, because it'll probably lead to me doing something incredibly stupid, but still. I think realizing this much has helped put things into perspective a bit. I need to calm the fuck down.

Anyway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm going to New Orleans after my exams and it sounds like the brother has quite the weekend lined up, so I'm excited. And then I'm coming home! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I really can't wait to see everyone again. It's been 3 long fucking months since I've even heard anybody's voice (I should probably start using my phone more...). I also just bought my plane tickets for the first part of summer, and I'll be spending just about two weeks in the bay, which should be really nice. I thought about possibly going somewhere else, but I don't really know where I'd go, and I really do miss home, so the bay it is! At least by then Chicago will be nice and sweltering hot, but right now it's still freezing cold, so fuck this place. :D

Well, I guess that was a semi-serious post. I'll try to lighten it up in the future. Maybe when it actually warms up a bit....

Drinking away my lack of a life

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I probably will fail in my attempt to find a life outside of med school. It's crazy how claustrophobic it gets being around the exact same people every single day. Especially when they're med students, and everything you do revolves around med school. So my solution to this problem is to find a few med students that can hold a conversation about something not med school related, and share my inclination to make fun of everything we do. Phase two of my plan is to then develop an alcohol addiction. I think I've mostly accomplished the first part of the plan, as I've been hanging out with a few of the girls in my class quite a bit. The second part of the plan is coming to fruition quite nicely as well.

We've developed a bit of a ritual to watch Lost together each Thursday night, and I bring along a bottle of wine to share, which makes it pretty fun. On Friday nights, we then go to dinner at one of the pubs and get a few drinks. Nevermind the stash of rum and vodka I have in my freezer. Heh. We even went crazy and went out to a bar last Wednesday night because we had the day off on Thursday. It was a med school thing with med school people, but still, lots of drinking, which makes everything better. Also, I'm still not bad at beer pong. Not great, but I'm not a total chick either. :)

Other than that, things have been pretty tame. I volunteered at a health fair in Chinatown, where about 200 Chinese grandmas and grandpas came in for full physical exams in a roughly 3 hour time span. It was crazy. And it was nice finally getting out and using whatever few skills I have to help people. That was the whole point of med school after all...

I've also been studying quite a bit and just kind of getting into the med school groove. Granted I hate life because it really is what I feared: all med school, all the time, but really what can you do?

Pictures, finally!

So, I finally figured out how to sync up my phone with my computer...and now I can start taking pictures with my phone again.

Here are some winter pics I took early last December, when it just started snowing and it was all novel and pretty.


I was waiting for a bus after working at a clinic here. The snow was coming down pretty gently and I was very much enjoying it.

This isn't the greatest picture, but it's right outside my building. This was also before Christmas, so you can see the tree has lights on it. It was actually really pretty, but they've taken all the lights down, so now everything just looks all bare and dead. There isn't as much snow on the ground anymore either. Most of it has melted away, although some rather cruel ice patches remain. Although it's supposed to snow for the next two days...which just makes me sad.

And here's my obligatory cat picture. Look at that belly! Man, that cheers me up. :)

Jaundiced AND Sensuous

Well, I made it through yet another exam. I actually didn't do as bad as I thought considering I didn't understand the material at all...cardiology is hard. Anyway, I finished my exam early and went straight to this wine store about a mile away. I bought four bottles of wine, 2 red and 2 white. I then carried those bastards all the way home. For some reason I didn't quite think that one through. But it didn't matter because the drinking began right after that.

A few of us went to one of the pubs right next to school for fries and drinks. I had two gimlets (gin with a splash of lime juice) and considering the bastards skimped on the fries, I got a bit drunk. The four of us managed to spend $70 on drinks, so at least I wasn't the only drunk. After that, we all took a break and went home before dinner. I took a much needed nap and then got ready for dinner. We went to California Pizza Kitchen (not my choice), but the food got surprisingly better after we had a bottle of wine. We then went and played Apples to Apples and drank more wine. We finished two more bottles by the end of the night. It was great. It was additionally great because apparently the bar our class chose for our official post-test party sucked horribly. It was so bad our class president wrote an email to everyone apologizing for it. Hahaha...suckers.

On Saturday, I had my last wine class, which focused on champagnes. Yummy, yummy champagnes. I then came home and had more wine with my dinner, and then I passed out on my bed for the rest of the night. Literally. I moved my laptop and everything to my bed, and there really is nothing better than getting under blankets and having your laptop in your lap (as it was meant to be). Then, I basically did nothing on Sunday. Greatest weekend ever.

We got right back to work on Monday though, which sucks. My brain is still drained from all the thinking I did these past couple weeks. Anyway, we're on the musculoskeletal unit, which means LOTS of anatomy lab. During lab this morning, one of the teachers, who is a retired surgeon, caught me as I was cleaning up and asked me if I was Greek. I told him I was middle eastern, so he starts commenting on my features. This included my jaundiced skin (I'm pretty sure he meant olive-y, or else I drank waaay too much wine) and my dark, sensuous eyes. Normally, no one would be able to get away with this, but I was so amused and encouraged by the fact that when I'm an old, retired doctor, I can go around and say whatever the hell I want to people. I'm really quite looking forward to it.

Well, that's all for now. This week should be interesting, as we start our Cultural Dynamics class, which is going to suck so hard, and the St. Vincent concert on Saturday (yay!).

Seasonal depression anyone?

Yay for my first post in February, hehe...whoops. Well, I have a decent excuse: February really sucks for weather. Normally, back home I would associate February with early spring. Cherry blossoms begin to bloom, the hills are still green from the winter rains, the sun is nice and warm. But here, in Chicago, February is fucked. It's the first time that I had to go out in subzero weather, and I don't see how anybody can be happy about life after that. My days basically consist of going to class, running through the awful weather as fast as humanly possible, and then coming home to study, because my life is just that full of joy and happiness.

Anyway, I'm just looking forward to Friday, after which I can breathe a little bit. By 'after' I mean Friday around 12pm, and by 'breathe' I mean drink myself into a coma. Yep, that's how I'm living life now. Mind you, I'll be getting hammered the classy way with lots of wine. I plan on going to wine store immediately after my test and buying a few bottles of wine. Someone else will be getting nice cheeses and breads...and then we will proceed to drink ourselves silly. Mmm, alcohol.

Then, on Saturday, I have my last wine class. It's going to be on champagnes. I'm so fucking excited about that. Usually, we taste about 5-6 wines per class, so there's a small bucket in the middle of the table where we dump the wine after tasting, so we don't get roaring drunk. My plan is basically to drink everything I'm given...because I like champagne and I just don't care any more.

Other than that, I really have nothing else going on. My life is basically nonexistent until after this test. And yes, I realize that the only thing I have planned to do once I get my life back is to drink wine. But it's cold outside, so I'm ok with that. Stupid winter. I probably should be more optimistic about it...but it sucks, so I'm going to stick with pessimism and anger.

Lazy > everything else

I actually had a pretty eventful weekend for once. Friday ended up being a long work day, as I had 6 hours of class. This is incredibly unusual for a Friday, because our school generally has the common sense to ease up on us at the end of the week. I guess since we got Monday off though, they had to make up for it somehow. Bastards. Anyway, I ended up going to the Hot Hot Heat, Louis XIV and The Editors concert that night. It was at the Vic Theater, which was literally a smaller version of the Warfield in SF. It was a pretty great show. Hot Hot Heat kinda phoned in the performance, probably because they were the openers and they haven't done anything great lately. Louis XIV rocked pretty hard. I only knew their one song which Live105 used to play all the time, but their other songs aren't bad either. They also have two violinists who are fun, and the guitarists were both really really good. They were fun to watch.

The Editors were pretty unexpectedly good. I listened to their album before the show, and it pretty much sounded like Interpol, but more upbeat and not all their songs sounded the same. And granted, all their songs did end up sounding the same live, but the fact that the lead singer was insane and the songs were crafted well made the show. The guy literally would jump from playing the piano to playing the guitar and back to playing the piano in a single song. At one point, he grabbed the mike, jumped on the piano and sang his little heart out from there. It was insanity. I haven't seen someone play with that much energy in a long time.

On Saturday, I had my second wine class. This time, it was all about red wines and how to buy one that was ready to drink and one that you could put away for a couple decades. The dude poured us this Spanish tempranillo wine that was just mind-blowingly delicious. Usually we take a couple sips of the wine and pour it out, so we don't end up throwing up in the middle of class, but I drank every little bit of this wine. It was soooo good (and I was kinda tipsy after class). I also realized that I can finally taste the differences between wines. Before, I just knew if a wine was good or bad. Now, I can kinda identify flavors. Oh yes, I'm working my ways up the snob hierarchy here. This is pretty momentous. This one wine is slowly becoming an obsession too. I've been looking online for this wine and for wine stores in my area so I can go buy some. Just the thought of it makes me all warm and happy inside.

January's coming to an end (time to send out the rent check), which actually makes me happy. It means I'm that much closer to spring break and summer vacation. And boy, do I need a decent break, even though I just had winter break, I know. I got a position as a coordinator for the student-run psychiatry clinic, which I kinda happened to fall into. It'll be fun, but also a crapload of more work. I also got a research project to work on, which is mostly for summer, but it's going to get started within the next month. This is all exciting, but we all know how lazy I am. All I really want to do is sleep. Like constantly, for maybe a week or so. That sounds so awesome.