Sunday, January 31, 2010

Could've Done Without That

Our winter formal was last night.  As Winning Run was not here with me, I had been dead set on not attending but ended up going with a group of friends.  After showering and shaving, I grabbed a suit and went to get dressed.  Evidently, I put on (and am still carrying) holiday weight because I could barely get the pants buttoned.  Mind you, this suit and my gut provided three labors as penance for my holiday gluttony: an inside button, a metal clasp, and an outside button.

I blew out all my breath, sucked in my belly, and prepared for battle.  Somewhere in the process of getting the pants on, I managed to slice the hell out of my finger on the metal clasp.  Luckily, the blood only started gushing out after I'd got the pants buttoned and zipped.  It's the little victories in life, you know.

The most dangerous thing in my pants.

So, at several points during the night, I had the pleasure of explaining that I cut my finger while putting on my pants because I'm a fatass.  Can't wait to get back in the gym.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

I Am Unqualified to Brew Coffee

Evidently, the stress and fatigue of the semester is starting.  As is my routine, I prep my coffee maker before going to bed and set the automatically brew a little earlier than my alarm.  Call me a Folger's commercial but I love waking to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee.  So, I hit the snooze button a few times and really noticed the amazingly fragrant coffee aroma wafting into my bedroom.  Still hazy from sleep, I clumsily made my way into the kitchen and turned on the light.

"What the hell is that brown towel on the floor?," I asked myself aloud.  A moment later, I noticed that the same "brown towel" was curled on the counter and snaked down the cabinets to the floor. Finally, my brain caught up with what I was seeing and confirmed that it was, indeed, not a towel but my morning cups of joe.  "Nice job, idiot," I said to myself.

I can understand not putting the coffee put all the way under the brewing basket or something to make it spill out.  My coffee pot was 5 feet away, in the dishwasher.  How the hell am I going to survive being on call?

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

A Meanness In This World

Nothing quite like preparing for a session on the "internal male genitalia" and "bladder and urethra" and, fifteen minutes before class, finding out that they changed the order of the topics.  And, more importantly, that today will be an interactive session in which you're expected to stand and deliver your differential diagnosis if called to do so.  Super.

And, just for the hell of it, let's add to that the development of the brain and frakking cranial nerves for Friday's test block.  And, some immunology.  And, for the surprise of the week, Pharmacology. We're having our first exam for a class two days after we have the first class.

Grrr.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

On To The Next One

Week Two is in the books and what an eventful one it was.  Again, it has been another week where the pendulum moves from the crushing stress of new classes to amazingly distasteful jokes in anatomy lab.  I feel like the clock has been tightly wound and, as a result, is flying by now only to slow down at the end of the semester.

My Bamba Surfs Internet Porn In My Dream
Earlier this week, I had a dream that I walked in on my grandmother surfing porn on the internet.  As would be the case with most grandparents, she got a little flustered when she couldn’t close the browser.  In fact, it took her a ridiculously long time to close it down.  All the while, she’s saying stereotypical grandmotherly things like “Oh Dear” or “My Goodness” or “I Was Just Looking for Recipes,” simultaneously fumbling with the mouse, and clicking errantly all over the screen before becoming hysterical with laughter at herself.  After looking away for as long as I could and trying to maintain the illusion of normalcy, I spent about ten minutes teaching her how to quickly close windows on her computer by simultaneously pressing the Alt and F4 keys.  She was grateful.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me that my dear Bamba is surfing porn in my dreams instead of me?

Dissecting the Va-Jay-Jay Is Tougher Than You Might Think
For this section of Gross Anatomy, I'm paired with a few of my good female friends. Needless to say, they make ridiculously inappropriate comments that have me swallowing my laughter and trying as hard as I can to keep it together.  This week, we had the pleasures of dissecting the Urogential Triangle on our female cadaver.  Being the only male in the dissecting team, they tried to make me blush a few times.  At one point during the dissection, they called one professor over to help identify a landmark on the external genitalia.  When he took a moment, one of the gals, J, says to him in a complete deadpan, "I thought you were pretty familiar with the vagina."  He waited a beat and came back with, "I usually have the lights off."
The next challenge came when we attempted to identify the crus of the clitoris, a tissue synonymous with the corpora cavernosa - an erectile tissue.  As the name might imply, there is a relationship with the clitoris.

 

To locate this tissue, one can use the clitoris as a landmark and, then, dissect laterally from it to locate the crus.  After some confusion on locating the "big C," I told the team how great it was that it wasn't only men who had a tough time finding it.  Apparently, the gauntlet was thrown because they challenged me to find it really quickly.  Without missing a beat, I told them to give me some room because I was going to have to climb on the table and get my face down there.  Our laughter prompted the professor to return and ask us what was going on.  Just being inappropriate and trying to earn low marks on respectfulness, I assured him.  Sometimes, dark humor is just what you need to get you through a situation.

Immunization Certification:  Epic Fail
This morning, I attempted to get a certification for giving immunizations.  The course was mandatory for second-year students and optional for us lowly first years.  Although I didn't really expect to pass the damned thing, I thought of it as a free play:  throw it up in the end-zone and maybe someone would come down with it.  After all, it had a lot of material from a class that I've not even taken at this point.

Let's just say that I'm pretty sure that I can deliver an IM or SQ injection but, obviously, have not memorized the vaccination schedule as required to successfully pass the test.  Luckily, I only spent a couple of hours studying for it.  Out of the approximately 90 people who showed up to take the exam, only a handful of people passed the exam and advanced to the practical side of giving injections.  Evidently, at this point, if a 13-year-old walked in a provided a list of the vaccines that she'd received at 6 months, 12 months, and 6 years old, I would be unable to determine from memory what vaccines to give her.  Although I failed the exam, I scored as well as many of the second year students (and better than a few).  That being said, if the pass rate for an exam is ridiculously low, maybe all of the blame doesn't belong on the students.  Just a thought.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Off and Running

The first week back in classes is behind me.  This go-around, I think, will be a long and brutal campaign toward June.  I'll say that the addition of Neuroanatomy, Pathology, and Pharmacology to the mix adds an exponential amount of stress and difficulty to the mix.  My "old" classes haven't been slouching either: we're starting Gross Anatomy this semester with the pelvis and have spend a good deal of the week on the Anal Triangle. 

Yep, it's as awesome as you'd imagine.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Back to the Future

After arriving back here in advance of school, I caught up with a few classmates and we decided to go see a movie.  Being that I'm not exactly in a metropolis, there aren't that many selections to choose from.  Typically, I tend to shy away from blockbusters and head toward more independent fare but, like I said, I'm not exactly in a metropolis.  So, we decided to go see Avatar.  I was curious to see the spectacle and didn't really expect too much from Cameron's story line.  Typically, I think he tends toward underdeveloped characters and incorporates a little too much cheesiness into his pictures.  No matter, I was willing to plunk down my cash and see the "game changer" that he'd unleashed.

One dilemma of seeing movies here in the Palm Springs of Washington is that the theaters take cash only.  Their online ticketing is, shall we say, a little behind the times.  In true 1988 fashion, we headed over to the theater yesterday evening to catch the 6pm showing.  When we got in line for tickets, we noticed after a few minutes that all remaining showings for the night were sold out.  By the way, this was scrawled on a whiteboard hanging on the ticket window.  No worries, we'd catch it today.  This morning, the gang got together for brunch and decided to head over immediately after to buy our tix a full hour before the start time.  Once again, on walking up to the ticket line, the whiteboard noted that the next two showings were sold out!  Seriously, the last time I wasn't able to buy tickets online and actually walked up to the theater to find the movie I wanted to see was sold out was twenty years ago when I was in high school.  Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this town?  Anywho, we bought our tix for a show nearly four hour later.  It sold out shortly after we got our tickets.  Forty-five minutes prior to showtime, our friends called to say that they were in line to get into the theater and would save us seats.

Finally, we made our way into the theater and watched the damned thing.  I'll just say that the animation was amazing.  It makes the animation in Robert Zemeckis' CGI flicks look like stick figures.  So, for that alone, it was worth the money.  The 3D was pretty stinking amazing also.  When I was a kid, all the 3D movies were pretty gimmicky with only a few scenes with objects flying at you.  That this entire film was in 3D still amazes me.  Keep in mind, however, that I've not pulled the trigger on seeing any of the spate of recent films offered in 3D; this was my maiden voyage.  So, that being said it was an entertaining movie.  The technology behind it was amazing.  The visual world Cameron's team created is unlike anything you've ever seen in cinema.  I think it really has moved the bars for digital animation.  Was it the best movie I've ever seen?  Hardly.  The story, in itself, is compelling and can easily be viewed as a parable for any number of issues (both current and historical).  A few of the plot points, though, were heavy-handed and some were far-fetched even for an imagined world which I had no problem buying into.  That being said, I'd recommend seeing it on the big screen just to be a part of the spectacle of a world-wide blockbuster.

If you can, buy your tix online, show up fifteen minutes before show time, and let me know how that feels.  I miss the new millennium.

Friday, January 01, 2010

2010? Really?

Seems like just yesterday that the eccentric, fanny-pack-wearing IT security guy at my old software job was withdrawing the money from his bank accounts, stockpiling goods, and preparing for the looming Y2K technology meltdown. 

Winning Run and I had a great lunch at Muss and Turner's with Tainted Hummus' own "Keytar Rob."  Later, we made a stop-in at a small get-together with some friends.  Finally, in bed by about 11:30pm because my flight left ATL this morning at 6:30am.  First to Cincinatti, then on to Seattle.  Most of my New Year's Day was spent cramped into seat with a wailing toddler directly behind me kicking my seat for most of the flight.  Hooray me!  Really, I'm not a parent but I'm pretty sure that quietly pleading with a toddler to stop crying is an ineffective strategy.  I'm pretty sure that a bouncing stroll up and down the aisle might've been a better option.  Needless to say, it's only the first of the year and I've already exceeded last year's crying-child-on-a-flight stats by about 1000%.  What can I say, I piss excellence.

Also, I had my first experience with snow chains on the drive over a mountain pass with a classmate.  Best part of it was when some guy in the car behind ours at the chain-up area, came up to me with questions on how to put them on his tires.  "Man, I'd love to help you but I'm from Georgia and this is the first time I've ever touched a snow chain.  I'm afraid I can't help you," I told him laughing.  He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his car to figure it out himself.


Near the top of the pass.

So, now I'm back at my crappy apartment.  Alone.  No television.  No wife.  No dog.  No old-friends to meet for a drink and a visit.  No black-eyed peas.  Or collard greens.  Or ham.  Just me and the thoughts that all this hardship is worth it:  that 2010 will be better than 2009.  That it will be the foundation for better years to come.

Happy New Year.