Time Magazine's cover story this week paints an interesting picture of the Iraqi WMD situation and why we may never find any.

To quote my friend Peter, "Ottmar Liebert is a god among men." I happen to agree!

I'm trying to get in better shape, and my first big cardio workout wastoday - 11 miles on the stationary bike, then 3 miles or so running around campus and the local neighborhoods. It felt good. Now I just have to stick to a workout schedule!

I am not a fan of Super Fresh. It's my local supermarket, but they lack the fundmental competence to respond to a simple comsumer request: "Can I get change for a dollar?"

My cashier couldn't do it. I wasn't sure if that meant that she no no change available, which I doubt, or whether she just wasn't allowed to. So she sent me to customer service. The customer service woman, who is either a terribly unhappy women or just looks like it all the time, told me that she was not able to make change either. She, too, had a cash register but told me that the place to get change was "the podium." Apparently that's the word they use to incorrectly describe a small table at the front of the store where one of the managers sits. Or at least that is where they are supposed to sit; I walked over to it and waited for 10 minutes before a manager returned. When I asked for change, she gave me a perplexed look, as if she didn't speak english.

"No," she said.

"No, as in you can't make change for me, or no, as in nobody in this store is allowed to do so?"

"Huh?"

"I want to change this 5 dollar bill for a few dollar bills and a few quarters. I have already purchased food from your store, but apparently neither the cashier nor the customer service worker was capable of doing so. So," - pause, look for nametag - "Renee, can you help me out?"

Renee the Shift Manager thought for a moment, then walked over to a cashier and had a short conversation. "She'll take care of you," Renee blurted out as she hurriedly escaped my questioning.

A minute later, I handed my $5 to the cashier and said, "I just need a dollar or two in quarters." She took the bill, gathered money from the cash register, and handed the cahnge to me."

"Thanks."

I looked at what she had given me -- four 1 dollar bills, 5 dimes, and 2 quarters.

Ugh. I walked gave up and walked out of the store. 2 minutes later, Rite Aid had exchanged $4 in quarters. Finally!

If a competitor supermarket open up anywhere nearby, I am going to shop there like crazy.

It has been a good weekend...

Went to Baltimore's "Power Plant Live" center on Friday night with my roommate and friends. It's named for the huge (no longer operational) power plant that is a landmark of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It has lots of bars, clubs, etc., and we were there dancing for a few hours. Got home around 4am. Good times.

Today I spent a lot of the day studying epidemiology. Miderm on Monday. Then cleaned the apartment and watched "Die Another Day." Entertaining but a little too long.

Tomorrow I have simple goals: do laundry and clean my room.

I try to avoid posting song lyrics on here, but these jumped out at me through the late-night haziness of my biostatistics problem set. The dark, brooding feel that permeates Evanescence songs is perfect for these late nights. And, surprisingly, they have some songs that are slower, more reflective, more musical than their radio singles.

.........................

Evanescence / "My Immortal"

my immortal
i'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all of my childish fears
and if you have to leave
i wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now i'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

i've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
i've been alone all along

I've tried to count the number of blogs that are named "A Moment of Clarity" or some derivative thereof. I lost count at about a billion. Also, lots of sites about alcoholism and recovery programs.

From Pulp Fiction: "You know, I was sitting here contemplating, eating my muffin, and I had what alcoholics call a "moment of clarity."

I'll make sure to remember that when I'm sitting in my epidemiology lecture tomorrow morning at 8:15, eating my muffin and contemplating why I am so tired.

It has been a rough couple days -- lots of late nights working on my medicare paper or preparing for midterms (already!). And I started class less than four weeks ago! I guess that's what I get for having an 8-week academic term. Ugh. Anyway, the paper is done and I had one of the exams this morning. One more problem set this week, then two midterms early next week. It ought to make for a busy weekend.

On a completely unrelated note, I failed the jealousy test again today. Hmmmmm. I wonder how long I'll take to pass it this time.

My classmates and I are meeting on Friday to begin the process of picking a policy topic on which we will draft legislation for the Maryland House of Delegates. Seriously! Any suggestions?

Off to bed...

Back from NYC - time to work now.

Hopkins cancelled classes after noon today, and the entire school is shut down tomorrow. The due date for my Medicare paper was moved to Tuesday. That's good news for me -- there was no was I was going to finish my the paper on time.

I'm planning to go to NYC this weekend as long as Isabel doesn't make the roads impassable.

My head hurts. Too much typing today. Four or five pages done, still lots more to finish before Friday.

I made real progress today...

-- first big workout (3 hrs!) at the new JHU gym
-- completed a huge problem set, which included learning a huge new statistics management program named Stata
-- finally organized all of the furniture and ethernet cables in our living room
-- cleaned my desk
-- picked a paper topic for my policy analysis paper: the Medicare prescription drug benefit for seniors and the major differences b/t the House and Senate bills
-- and found out that Hurricane Isabel is heading right toward me

Tomorrow ought to be a good catch-up day, too. Only two classes -- Management and Biostatistics -- then home by lunch!

Sleep.

What a difference a month makes. The present aspects of my life are nothing like what it was just four week ago. I'm not complaining -- I love school so far, it is fun to explore a new city, and I am excited about the next two years -- but in retrospect it's tough to remember all the emtional changes I've been through this summer. One month ago, I was in a completely different world in that regard.

The summer session was enlightening. I think that's the best word for it. I don't know if it was the timing (right before the MCAT and my departure from California) or the environment (the unique dorm lifestyle of having many of your friends just steps away) or something else entirely...but it made me especially contemplative. I spent a lot of time reflecting on important issues that are usually overlooked in the hustle of day-to-day life.

It was an experience I only shared with a few people, and it's hard for me to understand it without any of them here. It sort of feels like waking suddenly in the middle of the night with a dream's emotional remnants lingering in your mind. You're not really aware of what the dream was about until days or weeks later when something you see or hear suddenly brings it back to the forefront of your mind.

Or something like that.

It's amazing how quickly one can forget certain lessons. In high school I had to learn to appreciate the moment -- to stop worrying about the small stuff, to enjoy and experience the situations that I would never have again. I had to realize that something's always wrong, big or small, and that my inability to let go of the little problems would make it tough to enjoy the big moments. When I organized events, I had to come to terms with the fact that things never went exactly as planned, and that I needed to take them in in stride -- or not deal with them at all -- so I didn't get distacted from the larger picture. If I was in a relationship that wasn't perfect, I had to realize that relationships are inherently difficult and that I certainly wouldn't make things any better by always being distracted from the present by the potential future problems.

I think I forgot that things in life are rarely that clean-cut.

(pause)

Time for bed. Enough thinking for now.

Done with week two. Two problem sets, two labs, one paper, and about 400 pages of reading done.

I'm going to New York next weekend! We're having a mini-reunion of sorts.

My car is parked at a parking meter that has been stuck at "3hr45min" for nearly three weeks. :-)

Time for sleep. Will write this weekend.

It's so sad to lose touch with people. In many cases it's inevitable, and I've learned to adjust to that. But it really sucks when you're trying hard to keep up with someone else and you realize that they just don't care as much. Or at all. And then you start wondering how long that has been the case, and whether you've just been blind to it...

Part of me wonders if I'll ever get back in touch with the "inevitable" crowd. There were lots of people I knew of at Stanford who seemed like cool people, but they had different interests/friends/schedules and we never got to know each other. Or what about the middle group -- those people who you knew well for a while, and you'd still talk with them for a while if you ran into them on the street -- but otherwise it might seem weird if you contact them....do you ever wonder if those people ask the same thing about you?

A moment of clarity this is not.

Finally -- I'm back. Wow, what a crazy three weeks it has been.

My courses for this term (note that a term at the JHSPH is only eight weeks...so I'll be starting a new set of classes in November):
Biostatistics
Intro to Epidemiology
Intro to Health Policy
Seminar in Health Policy
Managing Health Services Organizations

Sounds like a whole bunch of fun, no? :-)