amy and i have reached the 11 month mark.* we celebrated last night by going out to an ethiopian restaurant whose name i have already forgotten (actually, i don't think i ever knew it). the food was delicious. we ate with our hands.

my all-too-short stint with the wonderful people in the peds hem/onc clinic is coming to a close. only two more days. i'm really going to miss working with those people and those patients... i wonder if all peds hem/onc clinics are staffed with such folks, or if i just got lucky?

our advisors advised us to find a faculty mentor to help guide us through our final semesters of medical school so we might be able to attain our dream residencies (what's my dream residency? whichever NYC hospital that's affiliated with sloan-kettering.. why MSKCC? i don't know. it's just a dream... or whatever children's hospital is in the OC). problem is, i've enjoyed everyone i've worked with so much, i don't even know who to approach. as in, i can't decide. i get along with all of them wonderfully, some of them are more candid and informal than others. and some have more credentials and renown than others. our advisors also hinted that if we pick a "powerful" mentor, they may be able to call in favors for us at other hospitals. while that sounds tempting, it also sounds pretty unethical. besides, i'm going to be applying for a pediatrics residency. it's not like i'm trying to be a dermatologist or anything.

next on the menu: this friday, i am expecting one stv slv and zaid spreewell to descend upon this sleepy town. monday i move to milwaukee, with a trunk full of neckties and bags of books. this time, however, the department of family medicine will be loaning me a laptop (suh-weeet!) so i can use the dial-up modem pool (hello 1991!).

been listening to a lot of the new decemberists album. i commented to d that i kinda thought all their songs sounded the same. i still sort of believe that statement, but i'm liking that same song more and more. and i'm beginning to be able to tell the difference between songs now. so yay for me the discerning listener. also been listening to the new spoon (doesn't sound like the last one) and new mercury rev (reminds me of the flaming lips). the new out hud is a lot of fun. i've also re-discovered the feist album, which is nice and relaxing and good for studying to. and i've fallen back in love with shuffle mode on my ipod, although the volume of hip-hop albums on it can make for some interesting stretches of several badly-acted, funny-only-the-first-time skits in a row.


*this is, hands down, the longest relationship i have ever been in ever. ever. i feel like i should take this as a sign of maturity, but i don't feel very matured. oh well.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 12:05 AM |

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 8:42 AM |

still listening to a lot of new order.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 4:51 PM |

all this talk about new order made me dig up "substance 1987" and give it a go... which makes me want to listen to joy division.

the past week has been spent as a part of the clinical pediatric heme/onc team. and i have come to realize that this has probably been one of the best weeks of medical school yet. i really love working with the patients, even working with the parents. it's incredibly fulfilling work. in the course of one day we went from having a party for a child who had just finished treatment (a cake, a personalized poster and certificate, free toys, and the entire peds heme/onc staff making fools of themselves (myself included) singing "happy end of chemotherapy to you"), to consoling the mother of another child who was not so fortunate.

to have the resilience that these doctors and nurses do, it really impresses me. (i'm positive that is horrid grammar. fire away liz.) they're dealing with human tragedy and impossible odds everyday, yet they are all the kindest, nicest, funniest, most down-to-earth docs i've worked with yet.

they say in pediatrics that the problem isn't the kids, it's the nightmare of dealing with the parents. but in hem/onc, all of the parents seem to understand that no matter what happens, the doctors are putting their heart and soul (that's the second joy divison reference so far) into their work, and everyone's pulling for the best outcome.

at the end of the day, i find myself not wanting to leave the clinic, simply because the company of the staff is so positive, and everybody's making a real difference (which is not to imply other medical subspecialties do not). i think i've found my path.... kinda makes me wanna DANCE DANCE DANCE TO THE RADIO.



[non sequitur: in one week i move to milwaukee for 2 months.]

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:28 PM |

yes, that's the album art. purportedly. i dragged that ugly behemoth off the official new order site, so it MUST BE TRUE. i've listened to it about 3 or 4 times already. it's growing on me. although i bet if i listened to a fucking toby keith album 3 or 4 times it would grow on me (but hopefully not, for the sake of my oh-so-fragile-credibility). kind of like how if i rolled around in mildew 3 or 4 times, it would grow on me.

ok, that's just gross, and totally missing the point. the new new order album is NOT mildew. definitely not toby keith (which would you rather roll around with? i'm leaning towards mildew). it's pretty okay good sometimes. i like the single "krafty" enough. some of the more introspective stuff reminds me of their older late-80s sound. i think the opening half of the album is strong. and they have big triumphant choruses which would be reminiscent of U2 if it weren't for the fact that bernard sumner doesn't sound nearly as preoccupied with rescuing the human race from eternal damnation as bono is. sumner's got that slightly detached, "i think you might have broken my heart but i bet you weren't even worth it anyway" tone to his voice, which i've always enjoyed. he makes a melancholic song sound so apathetic. can there be anything more hipster?

caveat: there is some weird reggae-ish (reggae in the sense that UB40 was reggae) track in the middle of the album, track 5 or something (i have not the tracklist). kind of a curveball, that one.

comment on the title: it's true. it's been tested on several levels and it's always held water. i know people who wish they were asian because they love new order so much. the connection? haven't a clue. although asians also love erasure a lot. like, A LOT.*

*this is excluding the subset of never-will-i-understand 2 fast 2 fobby azn thugs who only listen to the first wu-tang album and drag race their souped-up spoilered-out (ugly-as-hell) honda mitsubishi civic eclipses down not-quite-deserted streets.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:16 AM |

the neurology clinical exam was disposed of with this afternoon, with far too much pre-exam anxiety and minimal afterthought. the written (actually, computer based) final exam looms, and will be dealt with handily (i expect) on friday afternoon.

i've been slowly trying to fill my head with the required reading and assorted literature over the past week. instead of doing what i usually do, which is either study my ass off at the medical school and burn out the last 24 or 48 hours before the exam and forget everything i've learned the 72 hours prior, or leisurely peruse through my notes at home while watching television and surfing the internet(s), only to panic in the last 24 hours and attempt to pull an all-nighter the night before the exam, and end up fighting off sleep while i'm actually taking the exam (truth: it's happened numerous times, including during USMLE Step One, embarrasingly enough), i've returned to my former place of employment down the street, the blue cafe on the corner, and isolated myself in a busy room with a pair of headphones and an ipod (who knew M.I.A. was such good study music?) and rampaged through hundreds of powerpoint slides and poorly excerpted photocopies of reqeuired texts that i never had the intention of purchasing.*

what's odd about being back at electric earth for the first time in who knows how many months is how much the atmosphere of the cafe and the midwest mid-west wash neighborhood has transformed. gone are the granola earth mothers and dreadlocked burnouts and the eccentric older adult characters that would sit for hours at a time with one cup of coffee and work on some incomprehensible project. the cafe's now filled with a whole new population of UNDERGRADUATES. it's like the west wash: the new class. you recognize the show, but it's just not as cool as you remembered it way back when.

i've become so used to hearing about "adult life" in medical school: everybody's married or getting married or getting engaged to be married or talking about it or has kids or wants kids or is pregnant or talking about moving here or there and beginning their real lives, and i am not necessarily an exception, although i continue to think of myself (proudly, i've noticed) as a somewhat socially immature outlier amongst my classmates. basically, i've noticed that i have a habit of looking at a person's left hand to see if they have a ring, and how big that rock is.

and that's fine, i suppose, since that's where my life is inevitably headed. but to return to the cafe the past couple of nights, i've found myself once again in the world of fake IDs, walking to class, not starting homework until 10:30 at night, not going to class until 11 in the morning, and living life without consequence. only this time, i'm an observer and not a participant.

kinda makes me feel all old and shit. time to have a warm glass of milk and go to bed.**

(*total djork-style sentence)
(**just kidding. i'm a lactard.)

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:49 PM |

technically. until 10pm. last time i was "on call", i sat at home and waited to get paged until 10pm, stayed up and watched conan and went to bed. hopefully tonight will be every bit as exciting.

holy shit: M.I.A. "Arular"
holy shit: Prefuse 73 "Surrounded by Silence"
pretty sweet: Daft Punk "Human After All"
niiiiiice: Maroons "Ambush"
like whoa: Cam'ron "Purple Haze"
89dgjh038fhsf: Lemon Jelly "'64-'95"

enjoyable viewing: A Very Long Engagement, Sideways, Arrested Development Season 1, new epsiodes of The O.C.

jon heder (napoleon dynamite) was on leno last night. it wasn't all that funny. i guess he really has straight hair. he got a perm for the movie. that's kinda funny. he also talks like napoleon in real life, just not as breathy or affected. they played the clip where kip talks about chatting online with hot babes allll daaaayyy. (don't be jealous)

and i would just like to emphasize the supreme hottness of the M.I.A. album. it doesn't have that electro-dancehall blast of the diplo mash-up/bootleg, but it has a very 505 bounce to it. probably because it was made on one.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:53 PM |

i've added more photos to flickr.

fyi.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 12:32 AM |

cafeteria food has struck me down. i'm out of bread and bagels, so i didn't pack a lunch today and figured i'd just buy one at the cafeteria. my choices were disgusting ("philly cheese n' steak on hoagie"), bland ("pasta with red sauce") or completely absurd ("liver and onions with gravy"). i had the greek salad. it looked safe enough.

and granted, i can't be sure that the salad's the culprit, but jesus, i feel fucking ill.

so much for going for a jog. and since i've been home, i seem to have developed a headache. damnit. and damn that salad.

amy's birthday weekend in minnesota was a lot of fun, even though i think we spent about 8 cumulative hours at the mall of america, and took her out to birthday dinner at a restaurant that had meat in everything, including the salads and the french onion soup. she was sidelined with mashed potatoes and flatbread. i had a delicious bass (salmon, actually).

photos will be uploaded to flickr once i finish tweaking the colors and editing out as much redeye as possible. 271 photos were taken over the weekend, so it's kind of taking a while.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:56 PM |