My so-called Blog

Movin'!

Finally I am moving this blog over to LJ. If you want to continue to read my blog, you'll find it at http://www.livejournal.com/~misterbeans.

Most of the entries will likely be public. If you want to be able to read more juicy details of things in my life you will have to become my "friend." If you have an LJ account, you will know what I am talking about. If you don't, get one so I can add you to my friends list (you don't have to blog if you don't want to, but you will need a username).

Eeee-buh-deee-buh-deee That's all folks!

Eavesdropping

As I sit here, putzing around on the internet, one of my classmates is talking bad about several of my classmates. The guy was actually a TA last semester and he knows people's grades and he's making fun of the people who did poorly. He's not actually naming people, which is good, but he's essentially saying he's picked out who is totally hopeless and blah blah blah.

Doesn't make me mad so much as I am surprised at his attitude toward his fellow classmates. What a jerk. What a shame for him that he forgot to look at who else is in the room before he started being an ass!

...

Something odd occurred yesterday though not in a bad way. Can't discuss it here on an unprotected blog entry (another reason I should join LJ?)... I liked it and it was good in a *this was meant to occur* way, and it surprised me. Those of you who know what I am talking about: don't assume that this will change my life in any kind of dramatic way. Perhaps that is the weirdest part.

That's all I can say about that. I know it's incredibly rude to say that there is something I want to say and then refuse to tell you. Oh well. Deal. :-)

*secret smile*

Back to the routine

I woke up oddly happy this morning considering that I didn't fall asleep until 1:30 and had to get up at 7:00 (damn jet lag!). I think I am just glad to be back and doing my routine again. I am a homebody and I like to feel settled.

I only had a half day of classes today so now I can go home and clean my dirty dirty dirty apartment. I'm actually looking forward to it.

All things must come to an end

Thank goodness that is as true of bad things as anything else!

My vacation at home has been wonderful but now it's over. I return to New Orleans tomorrow morning and I'm excited about starting up classes again (although don't quote me on that by week 2!). I spent some great time with my family, went to Alaska, got drunk for New Year's/birthday (and landed myself a lovely hangover today!)... Ahhhhh... life is good. Ok, except for the hangover part.

Anyway, so I have to hit the ground running! I get back in the evening Sunday, have rounds at the hospital at 7 am on the first day of classes and then we into the full swing!

Let's just hope my apartment is warmer when I get back.

Catching up

Wow! What a couple of crazy days it has been around here. My brother and his wife and my Aunt and my Great Grandfather (hereafter referred to as GG) and his girlfriend Doris all came to town. The day after GG arrived, Christmas Eve, he broke his hip (he's 97). He was taken for an X-ray to confirm it, and then he had to be driven up to Vancouver to have surgery because he doesn't have insurance in America. The procedure (or any surgery really) is pretty risky for someone his age, so my mom spent Christmas up there with him and Doris, my Aunt and also my grandparents who flew out from Ottawa (where they were visiting my uncle). So far he is doing remarkably well but won't be in the clear until another week or so passes with no pneumonia or blood clots or the like.

So we celebrated Christmas a day late, and our hot-water heater held out just long enough to break after Christmas (it broke this morning and we spent the day with a repair man and the water shut off). My brother and sister in law left this morning and we had SO much fun together that I will definitely miss having them around. Emily got hooked on the Sims so I sat and played with her for HOURS.

In other news: I learned how to knit a few days ago and have started work on a hat for my brother Danny. I also learned phlebotomy this morning from my mother and was batting .500! I did three sticks: two on my mom and one on my 14 year old brother and tomorrow I will do draws on my dad and one of my other brothers. Yay!

One last thing before I go shower: I am going to retract some of my scroogey-ness from a previous post. Now, don't expect me to get all ooey gooey about Xmas, but I guess I would like to say that I enjoyed spending the time with my family and the festivities. I even feel that perhaps I need to rethink my feelings about Christmas a little... I've found that even when you ask people not to get you anything they still do. I'm not an ungrateful person and I appreciate every gift that I got this Xmas even though I would have been fine without them. And because of my stubbornness about Christmas I didn't do much in the way of gift-giving, telling myself it's because I don't celebrate christmas. But really I guess I did, whether I wanted to or not. All that occurred is that I ended feeling like I had been stingy because I didn't give much but received much. I never said I didn't want to give! I just want to sit Xmas out! Which, I am learning, is impossible. I'm still uncomfortable celebrating Christmas as a non-Christian, and still would prefer that people not get me things and rather use their generosity to be charitable, but have realized I am not comfortable NOT giving! How I will celebrate Christmas next year remains to be seen. There must be a balance that I can attain...

Awake!

Ack! Why am I still awake? If (and that seems to be the operative word now) I end up going to bed, I would need to be up in about 3 hours to make my flight to seattle. Why do I always do this? Yes granted I had some stuff to do today but I could have already done it and been asleep in my bed instead of puttering around looking at real-estate and other non-pressing things.

It seems any time I have an early flight I just end up staying up all night instead of going to bed, which is not the wisest choice considering I had an Xmas party at my parents' house tomorrow shortly after I land! Blech!

Now... should I scrap cleaning my place in favor of going to bed for a couple precious hours of sleep? Or what?

To buy or not to buy?

Lately the topic of being a homeowner seems to keep cropping up. I have decided to most likely not renew my lease here because of the lack of adequate heating (it's been as low as 45 degrees INSIDE my apartment in the last few days). My friend SarahScott is interested in buying if she moves here. And a woman I was talking to today mentioned something about her mortgage and it was very very reasonable. AND I saw one of my friend's places today and asked her what she pays in rent, since I am now thinking about where I would like to live and she told me that she owns her place.

It seems very doable to own a place here, and I looked at some real estate on the net and found some great places for under $115,000. With current interest rates, I could afford to be paying about what I pay in rent on my mortgage for a 2 or 3 bedroom place (I could rent out the other rooms to make up the costs in taxes and improvements etc).

Hmmm. ponder ponder. My lease is not up until August so I definitely have some time to think about it.

Cranky

For about an hour or so today, I just was in a crappy mood! No real reason at all: just that I was hungry, thirsty, annoyed that the state is mandating that I must replace my windshield before I can get my car safety-certified, and have bad PMS. The windshield thing isn't really a huge deal, I was more annoyed because I was hoping to get my inspection sticker out of the way today and when I went the first thing the guy says is that he can't give it to me because of my windshield being cracked, even though it's at the very bottom where you don't really notice it.

I called my mom to bitch and moan and she was so nice about being completely not sympathetic! She was like "Well someone is in a bad mood!" and my response:

"Yes, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I have a headache, I have a lot to do, I need a new windshield, and I am hot because it's sunny out and I refuse to turn on the A/C in my car because of how I've been cold for days!" Whew! What a laundry list!

Anyway she told me about someone who had just dropped dead of a heart attack at age 37 and that my life was much better in comparison. "Yes," I told her, "but mostly I love my life and it's just right now that I hate it. I think if I eat food and take a nap I will like things better." And with that I got off the phone and and ate and right I was. Amazing how such a little thing like being hungry had me completely out of sorts! Haha!

On an off-topic note: I read something in the newspaper that really made me sad. A local woman, a pregnant elementary school teacher at a private Islamic school was found stabbed to death in her bedroom. She lives in a quiet suburb of New Orleans. Her husband has a rock-solid alibi, so the best guess from the police was that this Palestinian woman is the victim of a hate crime, a product of anti-Arab sentiment in this country. And I almost cried, even though I was in the laundromat. Who on earth would kill a pregnant woman because they hate Arabs? I mean, even if you hated Arabs, wouldn't you choose a more likely victim, say some young guy in flight school or something? (not to justify hate crimes at ALL... just more to prove the point that I can't think of someone more innocent sounding)

Maria

This morning around 9:00 am I was getting ready to leave to go somewhere. My street is pretty dead at that time on a Saturday, and I was slow moving from being only half-awake and having a headache from being up late the night before. I saw how dirty my car was and it gave me pause for maybe 10 seconds before I turned the key in the door to open it. Just as I had inserted the key and was about to open the door, a woman called to me.

"Excuse me... is that your-- oh!" She said as she saw I had opened the door. Then she went on to explain.

"I'm Maria, I've lived in this neighborhood for 21 years, even before Nick bought your apartment building 17 years ago. Sometimes people break into cars here. See that car right there? 2 weeks ago the window was smashed and 10 dollars was taken off the passenger seat. I told the guy, I told him 'Why would you leave money in your car? You are asking for it to be stolen!' I always watch the people in this neighborhood. I am up at 3:00 in the morning. I see everything. And I know whose car is whose and sometimes all you have to do to stop something bad from happening is speak up. I can tell if someone is looking for something in a car that isn't theirs."

[I took some license with recreating this conversation. For once, I don't actually remember the word for word exchange!]

Maria is a small middle-aged and withered looking hispanic woman with a light accent who was outside smoking a cigarette. She's a woman who is beautiful but maybe only because it radiates from within... it can be hard to discern with people like her the difference between skin-deep beauty and a depth that causes them to be beautiful. I liked her instantly because she seemed fearless. She has lived in this neighborhood long before it was safe, and speaks up even though she could get hurt for doing so. And even though she didn't know who owns my car (and therefore who she might be helping) she was willing to ask questions about it.

I really love the sense of community I get here.

I'm on VACAAAAAAAAAAAAAATION

My exams are done, and I've already received my grades. I'm quite satisfied with how I did, and now I have 2 weeks to do nothin'!

The school had a student appreciation lunch for us, you should have seen all the food! Mmm. And the student government bought us Champagne, not to mention the several kegs they bought for tonight's party. :-)

Well, off to take care of business before I come home.

Buckling down

After a couple of days of screwing around, I am actually buckling down again. By this time tomorrow, I will be on vacaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaation.

I really started feeling stressed out today. I got a phone call from my financial aid officer yesterday telling me there was a problem with processing my scholarship, and then when I talked to him he told me it had been cancelled. Then he proceeded to try to freak me out by saying: "Now, if I were to have sent back your loans based n your award letter, and the money doesn't arrive or doesn't arrive soon, you will be billed for ~$40,000 and you will have to pay late charges. So you need to *make sure* the money is coming before I can process your award letter." Now, I know that my scholarship is not in danger, so I wasn't stressed that I had lost my scholarship or that I really would get billed, I was stressed about having to fix the situation. I spent almost a half an hour on the phone making calls just so I could tell him "No, it wasn't cancelled. They are processing the money, because they only got billed for it last week." Thanks, Mr. Financial Aid Guy, you're so helpful. Nice to know that the first thing they do when they see a problem is call me and tell me to fix it instead of making sure their ducks are in a row (Accounts receivable had credited my scholarship, then charged it back, all before they even sent out the bill, it turns out).

Also, I realized last night how much I actually have to do before I can leave town. And even though I am excited to go home, I am stressed about that too because a)a ton of people will be there and that's exhausting and b)I didn't leave myself any time here to get errands done, so I will be coming back to a long to-do list. Not a restful vacation!

That said, I am doing fine, I am not freaking out. I guess I just want a chance to breathe, and get some stuff done. Would you believe I have had some things on my to do list for 3 months?

Mental note: next semester I will take one afternoon a week off from studying to go do errands. I think it will make me more sane.

An Ode to the Liver

The Liver is damn cool.

The design was incredible. I think MIT engineers couldn't have done better (if they could, they would have). It stores excess glucose as glycogen until we need it, filters everything that comes in through the digestive tract, processes the degraded Red Blood Cells so that you can poop them out, filters any toxins and transforms them into soluble forms to be eliminated by the kidneys, and it produces over a liter of bile a day to help digest fats!

Right now I am looking at the liver histologically. The layout of the liver so that it can do all this at once is incredible.

So, liver architect, I thank you. I need these little epiphanies about the human body sometimes or I would go crazy.