Put a Fork in 2009

Boy, this one got out of here fast, didn't it?

I finished finals on the 19th, cracked open a bottle of Blue Label and had a celebratory toast.  Let's just say those damned things were pretty tough.  I focused most of my efforts on Physiology and BioChem.  As a result, I pulled up those grades at the expense of my Anatomy grade which fell.  All told, though, I passed everything so I'm thrilled.  For a while, it seemed doubtful.  After the dust settled, I packed my stuff and got my ass back to Georgia for the holidays and have been doing as little as possible.  Seriously, my goal has been to stay in my pajamas as long as possible each day and watch the worst television possible (reality programming excluded).

What I Learned During My First Semester in Medical School

• Nobody can truly prepare you for the shitstorm that you are entering.  Seriously, people told me that it would be tough but that I could succeed at it.  After I'd started, it seemed like all of my doctor friends changed their tune to "Yeah, it's pretty tough but you've got to gut it out and get through it."  Today, I really think that I can make it.  For the first few weeks, however, I was waiting for my bus ticket back home.
• Your closest friends and family really have no idea what you are battling through on a daily basis.  People can empathize and sympathize but, unless someone has done it, people don't truly understand.  At times, this is great because having a conversation with someone who is "in the real world" is awesome.  The outside is a balance to the all-consuming world of being a student; it's beneficial.  At other times, it can be pretty lonely when you are trying to recount an anecdote who's primary audience are med-school dorks like you.
• Sometimes, a class member can yell out "Anal Sex" in class and be courteously dismissed by the professor and thanked for a good guess but an incorrect answer.
• When strangers find out you're a med student, they will tell you things that they don't confide to others; it's the blessing and the curse of the profession.  For example, the guy who cuts what's left of my hair dropped some heavy personal medical information on me during a visit.  The best I could do was listen, remind him that I was seven weeks into my first semester of school, offer to track down some information for him and try to give him some resources.  I was flattered and frightened by his confidence in me.
• I can do this; I will be a doctor.  Early in the semester, I wrote a few notecards for myself and posted them around my apartment where I'd see them each day.  "Kick Ass Today" on the back door.  "You Can Do This" on the bathroom mirror.  The one that gets me going the most: "Do This For Bamba and Granddaddy." Sure do wish that those family and friends who have passed on could be here to experience this with me.  
• Friends, old and new, get you through it.  I'm now in a fraternity with my classmates.  We've been through the hell of the semester together and have seen each other at our best and worst.  They're the day to day crew that help you get over the peaks and valleys of the coursework.  Of course, my wife, family, and friends back home helped me more than I can articulate.  Cards, voice messages, quick emails or texts give me so much motivation to keep studying for another ten minutes, another half hour, another hour, another day.
• You will be isolated by what you know.  Lots of acquaintances will glaze over when you get into the second sentence of your description of med school.  Others will laud you with "fact" that are absolutely untrue.  Seriously, people will repeat things that one would think are too absurd to pass along as fact.  People just don't think about what they're saying.  I was walking my dog with a guy at the park who told me about a lady who "cured" her cancer simply by thinking positive thoughts.  After listening to as much as I could, I sort of unloaded on the error of his thinking and of the tremendous gaps in the retelling of his story.  Without a doubt, a positive attitude and strong support network is beneficial when fighting illness but I'm not sure that it's the only thing.  After spending most of every day thinking critically and doing your best to rationalize through things, it's a little more difficult to suffer fools and foolish comments. At a minimum, people should research things; snopes.com is a great start.
• Classmates will drunk-dial you over the holidays to remind you of that one time when a microphone fell into your ass in front of the entire class.
• Some classmates might get a little uneasy at jokes involving hobo hunting (for sport, of course) and jokes involving Bea Arthur's sexual magnetism.

Here's looking forward to next semester.

Flip the Calendar; It's 2009.

I'm still shaking my head wondering where the hell the past year went. Seems like just yesterday, Winning Run and I were in Rhode Island bringing in the New Year with Dr. J3K, Sandy, and The Captain.

This year, we headed down to Valdosta for a quick visit with Crazy Greg. During a conversation with J3K prior to heading south, we gauged the probability of someone requiring medical care:

"So, what's he got planned?," asked the good doctor.
"Well, he told me that he's been in the timber stand to find a few pine trees to burn. Oh, he mentioned that he's got the golf cart fixed and that we'll be going to Florida to buy a bunch of fireworks."
"Uh oh."
"Yep. Seems like the chances are good that someone's going to lose a hand or an eye."
"Just tell him that if he does the fire right, they'll be able to smell it all the way in Atlanta like a few years ago."
"Deal."

Shortly after arriving, we piled into the Crazy Greg's truck and headed to the Florida line to buy some fireworks. Evidently, we stumbled onto one heck of a year-end sale: Buy One, Get Two Free. At the register, Greg found out that he'd actually gotten about $140 of "free" fireworks.

It's a wonder that fireworks stores don't have a prosthetics aisle.
It really couldn't make the places any more strange or uncomfortable.

After buying the contraband fireworks, we headed back to his place, had a few drinks, ate dinner, and scouted some wood for the bonfire.

As darkness fell, the fire was raging, Georgia Tech was getting their ass handed to them, and everyone anticipated a fireworks show that would make the Beijing Opening Ceremonies look like sparklers at the VFW. The secret to a successful pyrotechnics program is the Magic Black Snake; easily the most terrifyingly awesome firework in existence. The runner up is any type of mortar round. Honestly, it's pretty exhilarating to stuff a cardboard tube with a giant projectile explosive, fumble with a lighter in the darkness to ignite the fuse, and run like hell to a presumed safe distance.

Lightning.

Roman Candle vs. Spark Fountain.

Maintaining safe distance from trees.

Turns out that the evening was much more low key than anticipated. All the promised elements didn't yield any calls to 911 or trips to the hospital. This is, of course, a very good thing. Shortly after the champagne toast at midnight and a few phone calls and text messages, we turned in for the night with eager anticipation of a UGA victory and high hopes for the new year.

Sparkle Motion.

Sparkle Motion Revisited.

Best wishes for a fantastic 2009.

Happy New Year! (Belated)

I've finally caught up on the sleep I missed during our whirlwind New England tour. Here are some highlights from the trip.

Newport Cliff Walk
On Sunday, we drove to Newport, RI to complete the famous Cliff Walk. Essentially, you walk along a beautiful, rocky New England shoreline and look at some incredible mansions. If you're in the neighborhood, I strongly recommend it. More photos of our walk are here.

Avoid doing this if even slightly hungover.
Also, pee before you start.

This is one of the little fixer-uppers along the walk.

Dr. J3K uses his fancy "teaching stick"
to remind us that rowdy behavior
isn't permitted on the Cliff Walk.

Campus Center at Wellesley College

On New Year's Eve, we drove up to see the Wellesley Campus Center that my wife helped design. She gave us a personal tour of it. Seriously, it's an awesome building.

Kimberly, in the midst of her tour.

Another view of the building.

Because we were sooo damned cold, we decided to stop in for ice cream sundaes at a great little ice cream shop. J3K was tempted to order the 8-scoop "white mountain" but opted out of it. Hands down, White Mountain Creamery is tops. More advice: don't let anyone with a lactose intolerance eat ice cream. If you do, they're likely to nearly kill you on the drive home with their champion-like behavior.

Yaargghh!
Other than Graceland Too and a handful of travel situations that I'm happy to have escaped, few places have impressed/terrified/thrilled me as much as Captain Seaweed's Pub in Providence, Rhode Island. I highly, highly recommend it.

A few nights earlier, Dr.J3K and I had a quick beer before they closed. On New Year's Eve, however, we decided to stop in for a couple of rounds before heading to our final destination.

Inside these walls is a fantastic little dive that will frighten and exhilarate you.

In anticipation of our visit, we'd been speaking in pirate voices (yaarrghh!) for most of the afternoon. When our group of seven entered the bar, the total occupancy nearly tripled. There were two old guys at the bar. One was a slight, olive-skinned man who was impressively drunk. The other was a bleary-eyed gent who sat at the bar nursing his Budweiser between sips of his whiskey backer. We walked in and ordered a $5 pitcher of beer to split among the group. Old, drunk guy must've decided that he liked the way we looked because he instantly called for a pitcher of beer for us. "On the house!," he kept yelling in his Southie accent.

Immediately, Dr. J3K and I threw some dollars in the jukebox and offered to play a song or two for the regulars.

"You guys want to hear anything?," I asked.

"Thanks guys but I'm an old guy," Bud/Whiskey responded.

"We can play you a bunch of Elton John," Dr. J3K offered after quickly surmising that the oldest thing in the jukebox was vintage Elton.

"No thanks," Bud/Whiskey said almost immediately.

"Elton John? What the hell?," I urgently whispered to J3K.

"I don't know. We're gonna get killed," he replied.

To atone for any faux pas, we played a ton of manly, classic rock.

A short while later, J3K, our friend Eddie, and I made our way over to the foosball table. As I'm terrible at this game, I played the role of interested spectator as J3K demolished poor Eddie. Each time J3K scored, the foosball hitting the goal pierced the din in the bar. Each time, the beefy bartender and his beefy sketchy pal would look our way, nod to each other, and look our way again. When the game concluded, they quickly headed over to the table and demanded that we play them. The bartender pulled quarters from the register and slammed them down on the edge of the table.

"C'mon guys. Just for fun," he said.

On hearing the phrase "just for fun," I immediately saw an image of myself two hours in the future: I was wearing only my boxers, my eyes were nearly swollen shut from the beating, I bled from my mouth, and wept with fear each time they demanded that I get them their $1,000. So, this is how it starts, I thought to myself. J3K and I shot each other a quick look as he politely tried to decline.

"We'll split up and play teams," the bartender insisted. "You play wit me," he said, nodding to J3K.

The bartender's beefy friend had a host of jailhouse tats on his hand. On noticing this, I immediately felt very, very comfortable with the progressing situation. As I looked over at the women in our group, they played a card game at the table with the pitcher of beer and creatively ignored the old, drunk guy as he attempted to dance near them.

After what turned out to be a very close, hard-fought game, the bartender and his buddy thanked us for playing and then, strangely, disappeared outside. I looked around and the only people in sight were our group and the old drunk guy who was loudly telling a story about Wilma Flintstone and using an object that referred to as one of her adult toys. That's rich, I thought.

After a quick trip to the restroom, I decided to stick my head outside and take a look at the courtyard. In doing so, I thought that I might've made another mistake. Bartender, beefy friend, and Bud/Whiskey were outside having cigarettes. They asked where I was from and we struck up a conversation. Five or six minutes later, J3K showed up looking relieved that I was still alive. Later, he admitted that he'd come out to make sure I wasn't getting my ass kicked. Turns out, though, that all the guys there were really friendly. They wished us a Happy New Year, invited us to come back to the bar, and were super nice. Still, I could easily see them kicking my ass for some dumb thing I did or said.

On the way, out old drunk guy sways out the door and says "I wish yous a Happy New Yeah. God bless yous and ya families. Happy New Yeah."

"Same to you, pal. Same to you," I told him.

For $5: two pitchers of beer, a game of foosball, the fear of impending death/extortion, the escapades of a benign drunkard, and a memorable evening.

Wickenden Pub
After Seaweed's, we headed over to the Wickenden Pub to close out the evening. We had more pints, played Quiddler (an awesome, easy game to which I was just introduced), and rang in the new year.

Avian Duel

Early on New Year's Day, we woke and headed to Boston for our flight. Luckily, we changed to a direct flight home instead of connecting through Cincinnati. We were home in time to see UGA demolish Hawaii. Happy New Year indeed.