Merry Christmas!

I'm back in Oregon for a few days after spending some quality time with my relatives in southern California. I don't have a ton of time to relax, but hopefully this will give me time to rest and relax before I head back to Cleveland at the end of the week. And, hopefully, the new year will bring me back to the blogging world. The med school schedule hasn't been particularly conducive to keeping up with the blog, to say the least.

In the words of Rep John Dingell (D-MI), "Merry Christmas to all, and to Bill O'Reilly, Happy Holidays."

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! This is my first Thanksgiving away from home, but I've had a pretty good day. Baked a few tarte tatins this afternoon, went to a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by one of my med school classmates, and played a little bit in the snow. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've had snow at Thanksgiving in a long, long time.

It will hopefully be a nice, slow, relaxing, restful weekend. Wish me luck!

When you least expect it

This weekend has been surprisingly fun. We have a enormous cell physiology-neuromuscular-histology-anatomy exam on Thursday, so this weekend (and all of next week) is supposed to be filled with studying, anxiety, and books. And while that has been true to some extent, the last few days have also been incredibly reaffirming. On Friday night I went to a theater to see Shopgirl, which I liked for the most part. Last night I went out for dinner at the Great Lakes Brewing Company to celebrate a friend's completion of the Series 7 exam. And I've spent a lot of time building some bonds with some very important people.

This week is going to be pretty rough for the next 96 hours, but I know I can do it.

First goal? Finish my note summaries on our neuromuscular lectures. Here goes...

Mood: surprisingly relaxed and content
Song: Some of the music from Shopgirl...don't know the names of the songs yet...

Mental wanderings

In just a few short months, I've learned that med school can get pretty intense. Every so often, you need a day that can focus on more than academics -- on errands, on financial demands, on personal issues. Today was one of those days. I know that the next eight days will have some serious academic demands, but for now I feel content. Right now I'm happy. I can handle the next week.

And, by the way, our Halloween party was insane. Turnout was two or three times higher than expected, and everyone seemed to have a pretty good time. Certainly a night to remember.

Mood: cheerful and optimistic (despite near-constant fatigue)
Song: Toad the Wet Sprocket, "All Right" and Van Halen, "Not Enough"

The Lights Come On

Somehow, in the last 24 hours, anatomy has started making a lot of sense to me. I don't know what happened, and I'm not sure if it will last, but for now I have the first hint of academic confidence since the start of med school. And I like it.

And tomorrow is Friday. Hooray. (The fact that I plan to study nearly the entire day doesn't make a dent in my excitment.)

And Saturday is our Halloween party. Super hooray.

Mood: optimistic
Song: Live, "The Beauty of Gray" and REM, "Man on the Moon"

Studying as default?

I've noticed recently that studying is now my default behavior. Unless I have something else to do -- eating, sleeping, going to lecuture, etc. -- I will virtually always be studying. And somehow it seems normal. In the past, I had a difficult time imagining how medical students could really study so much...didn't it get old? Didn't they want to do anything else? Didn't they lose their minds?

As I've learned, the answer is "yes." But that doesn't mean I won't keep going. When virtually everyone you see is studying most fo the time, it somehow becomes a normal baseline activity. If someone asks what I'm doing this weekend, I will probably say, "Not much." If it's a med student who asks, they'll assume that means I'm studying all weekend. If someone else asks, they'll just think that I'm not very active.

As a side benefit, I seem to be able to repress most of my emotional issues when I'm studying. It doesn't do anything to resolve them, but at least I can ignore them for a while. Amen.

Back to anatomy. Only another few billion names to learn.

Mood: Calm
Song: Evanescence, "Listen to the Rain" and Garbage, "Only Happy When It Rains"

End of the week

It's late and I should go to bed, but I have an odd feeling in my mind that I can't describe. I feel great for the most part, but I've been feeling strangely conflicted about my emotions recently.

• For example, I had a pretty hectic week and I'm happy it's Friday...but I've said that nearly every week since starting med school.
  
• I'm building some great friendships here at Case, but it seems strange to say that since I've only been in school for 60 days. Yet there are a few people here who I know far better than some of the people I interacted with in DC for an entire year.
  
• I studied for nearly 12 hours today. I feel like I made a lot of progress. And yet I still can't help but think that I'm still re-discovering how to study...often I get done studying and I can't remember a single thing I've learned.
  
• We started anatomy this week...had dissection labs on Monday and Thursday. Did I pass out or get nauseus? No. Am I comfortable with the idea of cutting through the tissue of a donated body? Not entirely. And did I want to know what it smelled like when you're making cuts with bone saw? Not at all.
  
• I saw the Navy recruiter at a residency fair today on campus. I still need to sit down look through all the program material. I'm still months away from making a decision....right now I think I'm in denial/avoidance mode. I like so many parts of the program, but there are so many unknowns. What if I want to enter a really competitive residency that would be impossible to get in the military? What if this decision ruins my ability to pursue a career in academic medicine? What if I meet someone in medical school who is perfect for me...except that she doens't want to deal with my mandatory years of service after med school? I could go on and on. I've been thinking about these issues for two or three years now, yet I keep coming back to this program. At least I have a few months to think about it before the deadlines start getting close.
  

As usual, I'm sure sleep will help. Tomorrow is another day of studying.

Mood: Jumbled. Relieved? Anxious? Lonely?
Song: Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"

A little more intensity, please?

School is starting to become my life. We started anatomy on Monday and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's an amazing educational opportunity, but that doesn't mean I'm sure what my emtional reactions are. Free time is becoming quite rare, and by Monday evening I was already hoping for Friday.

I have tons to talk about -- the dissection, my still-in-progress Navy decision, the identify crisis/transformation that med school triggers, etc. For now, though, it will have to wait. Sleep is the top priority now.

Going to the Jason Mraz concert tomorrow. Ought to be a good time.

Mood: tired but adapting
Song: Michael Nyman, "The Piano"

Another left-wing conspiracy?

Bill Kristol has an interesting article in the October 24th edition of the Weekly Standard:

THE MOST EFFECTIVE CONSERVATIVE LEGISLATOR of--oh--the last century or so, Congressman Tom DeLay, was indicted last month for allegedly violating Texas campaign finance laws, and has vacated his position as House majority leader. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, is under investigation by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for his sale of stock in the medical company his family started.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby have been under investigation by a special federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, for more than two years. When appointed in 2003 by the Bush Justice Department, Fitzgerald's mandate was to find out if the leaking to reporters of the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was a violation of a 1982 statute known as the Philip Agee law, and if so, who violated it. It now seems clear that Rove and Libby are the main targets of the prosecutor, and that both are in imminent danger of indictment.

What do these four men have in common, other than their status as prosecutorial targets? Since 2001, they have been among the most prominent promoters of the conservative agenda of the Bush administration.

I don't expect Kristol to actually blame these people for their current situations, but his approach certainly did surprise me. Why are these four people under investigation? If you ask him, it's because the left wing has decided to pursue a strategy of criminalization to defeat conservatives. What Kristol leaves out is that fact that it's only because the left wing is so organized and holds so many powerful positions in Washington that this strategy is possible.

Why are conservative Republicans, who control the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in living memory, so vulnerable to the phenomenon of criminalization? Is it simple payback for the impeachment of Bill Clinton? Or is it a reflection of some deep malady at the heart of American politics? If criminalization is seen to loom ahead for every conservative who begins successfully to act out his or her beliefs in government or politics, is the project of conservative reform sustainable?

We don't pretend to have all the answers, or a solid answer even to one of these questions. But it's a reasonable bet that the fall of 2005 will be remembered as a time when it became clear that a comprehensive strategy of criminalization had been implemented to inflict defeat on conservatives who seek to govern as conservatives. And it is clear that thinking through a response to this challenge is a task conservatives can no longer postpone.

Pardon me while I laugh.

Much Better

After a six-hour nap this afternoon and a two-hour high intensity jujitsu workout tonight, I'm feeling like an entirely new person compared to this morning. Now I'll head to bed and get nearly 8 hours of sleep. Life is good.

Mood: Peaceful
Song: Moby, "Hymn" and "First Cool Hive"

Recovery

I passed the exam. Woohoo. Now I'm feeling the effects of my marathon study session last weekend and the re-emergence of my coffee habit. After an hour of lecture this morning, I realized that I was having a tough time doing much of anything. And while I didn't feel specifically tired, I felt empty. Every internal alarm kept telling me that I needed to sleep, and soon. So I came home and in a few minutes I'll take a nap...for 4-6 hours.

The last few days have been really odd. I haven't been myself. I've been making rush decisions without thinking them through, I've been having a tough time paying attention to even the most basic conversations, and I've been talking a lot more (babbling, really) than I usually do. It's as if I've been walking around in a semi-drunken state since the middle of last week. Plus I'm feeling emotionally unsettled but I'm not really sure why. All in all, I need to recover from the last five or six days. That's my self-prescription for today...sleep, food, cleaning, laundry, and more sleep. Tomorrow I hope to be my usual self again.

Mood: fuzzy
Song: Coldplay, "Fix You"

Must...Keep...Studying

32 hours of studying in the last 3 days, and I still don't feel like I have covered all the material for the exam tomorrow. Who ever thought that molecular biology, genetics, and human development could be so...complicated??? (Don't answer that.)

On an unrelated note, I saw pictures today of an ex-girlfriend's recent wedding. Talk about a shock to the system. Fortunately, studying for this exam has pummeled my mind into a state of emotional numbness so I don't really have to think about it. But....wow. Congratulations, MG.

One more hour, then I sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day.

Mood: Don't really have one right now.
Song: Ottmar Liebert, "Spanish Steps (Rome in May)" and Coldplay, "Talk"

Watching the crowd

Quick note -- there's this guy at Starbucks today who I've seen around the Coventry area a few times. As usual, he is sitting with a drink, staring at a wall, and not saying anything. For hours. We're talking zero movement. He's not sleeping, either, unless he can sleep with his eyes open. Suddenly, an attractive woman approaches (who he apparently knows?) and the frozen mime act suddenly evaporates. He greets her, tries to engage her in conversation, and she replies a little bit. He says he's been working on a practice test of some sort, at which I silently laugh. He hasn't moved in two hours!

As soon as she sits down and their short conversation ends, he picks up a set of papers (the practice test?) and begins to look over them. After a minute or two, though, he puts down the papers (too much work?) and resumes the previous frozen position. We're back to square one.

Update: After another 40-45 minutes, he stands up, walks around the store for a minute, and sits back down. Picks up a newspaper, reads for about 30 seconds, and puts the paper down. Goes back to looking at the wall.

Now I feel a lot better about my level of productivity today. :-)

Mood: In the zone. Studying all day and somehow feeling okay about that.
Songs: Blink 182, "Some Girls Try Too Hard" and Uncle Kracker, "In A Little While"

TGIF...sort of

It's finally Friday...and I'm studying all night. We have a big exam (molecular biology, genetics, and development) on Monday morning, so this entire weekend will be dedicated to that cause. It has been an incredibly long time since I've studied on a Friday night (4 years? 5 years?), but it was an easy decision to make since (a) all my friends are doing the same thing, and (b) fear is a very strong motivator.

I talked with the Navy recruiter on Wednesday. It was a productive conversation, and I discovered that I don't have to finish the application until early next year, so I feel a lot better now that I don't have to panic and rush to finish the application. I still have a lot of issues to figure out in that regard, but fortunately I can wait until next week to think about them.

We formed our groups for Anatomy today. I think we'll "receive" (?) our cadavers next week...ought to be a pretty amazing/stunning/uncomfortable experience.

For the first time in recent memory, life is starting to get complicated again. The time requirements of school continue to grow and grow, and I'm starting to look ahead to extracurricular plans (AMSA, most likely in their policy group) and my HPSP/Navy decision. And that's just the start of it...

Back to the books.

Mood: Cautious, a little anxious, a little optimistic. Trying to focus.
Song: Gypsy Kings, "Galaxia" and Ozzy, "I Just Want You"

All I wanted...

...was to sleep. For nearly every waking moment today, I just wanted to stop listening/studying/working, curl up in a ball, and fall asleep on the floor. That's it. And, of course, now that I'm home and relaxed and trying to go to sleep, a million thoughts flood my head and sleep evades me...

Mood: Really, really confused
Song: Evanescence, "Anywhere"

The "To Do" List Keeps Growing...

Med school life is starting to get pretty busy. A month ago, I only had to handle 5 hours of lecture and an occasional meeting or review session. Now, though, it seems like each day is filled from morning to night with seemingly essential activities.

Today I had my first RAMP rotation (adolescent pediatrics @ Univ. Hospitals). It was a good educational experience. I'm still getting used to the idea of wearing a white coat...and having patients believe that I'm actually qualified to wear it. I had a good time in the clinic today, but I get the feeling that pediatrics might not be the best match to my interests. (I like kids, but I don't know if I want to spend my career doing well-child exams and ordering vaccinations.) Joking aside, the pediatricians I worked with today were exceptionally talented and I was thankful that they were so helpful/encouraging/supportive/instructive.

I'm not really looking forward to this week...it bodes of late nights, early mornings, endless reading, and more coffee. (sigh) I have a ton of "errands" (i.e., any non-academic task) to do: student loan determents, getting paperwork approved by the registrar, calling the Navy people, starting the HPSP application, sleeping (is an errand?!? nevermind, forget I wrote it), and more. And that's on top of the 1293812 hours of studying I have to do in the next six days. At least my weekly jujitsu class tomorrow evening will help with the stress, although last week I screwed up my ankle during class and that didn't help. Maybe tomorrow night I'll just take it a little easier than usual...

I've found that I get nervous about most of our non-classroom activities: patient communication workshops, physical diagnosis, etc. The strange thing is that I think I do pretty well in these sessions, especially the communication workshops, yet I still get nervous about them. I think most of it has to do with the fact that we're interacting with standardized patients. And, yes, I recognize that the purpose of standardized patients is to allow us to learn skills in a controlled, low-pressure environment...yet I feel that any environment in which I'm being tested on my interaction with patients will make for an inherently stressful interaction. Or something like that. Of course, I feel good about myself and the stress goes away each week when I complete each session and recognize that interacting with patients is something I do naturally. I just seem to forget that lesson each week.

Still working on the HPSP post. I'm hoping to call the Navy recruiter tomorrow afternoon to get some information, so perhaps I'll have more to write about by tomorrow night. Talking about stress...this decision certainly provokes it, yet I keep coming back to it, time and time again.

A friend commented tonight that the process of getting to know our new classmates is both fun and frustrating. How true that is. I think we've made it through a few different phases of getting to know each other...the working-hard-to-impress stage during the first week, the see-how-we-all-react-to-stress stage, the collective anxiety or discomfort with certain shared conversations/experiences, etc. Just a week or two ago, the pervasive question during our 10-minutes break between lectures was about which of our classmates would hook up/start dating/make a scene first. By this week, though, it seems like everyone agrees that those quesions are cliche/obsolete/no longer relevant. Perhaps it's because an exam is approaching and we won't risk the distraction; I'll wait a see if the same questions resume next week after the test.

At the same time, I realize that I've only been in Cleveland for six or seven weeks. To think that I actually know anybody yet seems quite premature...yet I feel like I already know who my friends are going to be. If that sounds confusing, then I probably explained it correctly.

Bedtime.

Mood: Anxious. And sleepy.
Song: Staind, "Right Here Waiting" / Patrick Park, "Something Pretty" / Speechwriters LLC, "Annie Dan"

Three years!

Wow -- it has been three years since I started this blog! It's pretty strange for me to think about. Three years ago I was disappointed with my job, getting rejected from med schools left and right (I really should have a retrospective post about my three years of med school applications), and was generally worried about where things were heading. Several dozen applications, three states, and one master's degree later, I'm finally where I want to be. And three years from now? I think I'll be applying to residencies. (shudder) For now I'm just thankful to have made it this far. :-)

I'm working on a post about my upcoming decision on whether I should apply for the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship Program...hopefully I'll finish that tomorrow sometime. In the meantime, I'm going to relax and enjoy my Saturday evening. Tomorrow is a big studying day.

Mood: Optimistic
Song: Queen, "Somebody to Love" and The Wallflowers, "Closer to You"

Finally

CNN:

Rep. Tom DeLay says he will step aside as House majority leader after a grand jury indicted him on a conspiracy charge, accusing him and two others of improperly funneling corporate donations to a Republican political action committee.

Hallelujah. It's about freaking time.

Everything Comes Together

I study at Starbucks all the time. Usually it's a great place to study, but there can be good days and bad days in the world of studying (as with anything else in life).

Tonight, I have the right level of noise, the right level of caffeine (which is certainly lower than you would expect), the right music, and my study materials in front of me. And everything is coming together...I've probably accomplished more in the last two hours of studying than in most of the last week. Let's just hope I can remember what I've learned tomorrow...

Mood: My classic intensity (just without the usual caffeine high)
Song: Dvorak's Symphony No.9 "From The New World" - IV. Allegro con fuoco

Good weekend

What a great weekend -- had a party on Friday, caught up on sleep, reorganized my room, finally set up our cable and internet, and started my serious studying for cell bio/genetics. For the first time since arriving in Cleveland, I finally feel like I'm moved in and settled. I'm not excited that tomorrow is Monday, but at least I feel prepared to start the week...

Mood: Calm, optimistic
Song: Ottmar Liebert, "Little Wing"

Wikipedia: Xenu

As I said previously, Wikipedia offers an incredible variety of online articles. And while I don't want to trash anyone's religion, an article I found on Wikipedia convinced me that Scientology is...overwhelmingly different from my view of the world. I'll just leave it at that.

Consider the Wikipedia entry on Xenu. It's among the most entertaining things I've ever read online. For starters...

In Scientology doctrine, Xenu is a galactic ruler who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to cause people problems today. These events are known to Scientologists as "Incident II", and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire or the R6 implant. The story of Xenu is part of a much wider range of Scientology beliefs in extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology.

Got it? Xenu stacked the people around volcanoes (instead of merely dumping them into giant piles), then detonated hydrogen bombs to vaporize their bodies. And now their souls cling to us and cause problems? Seems easy enough.

But wait - there's more. (Italics are from the Wikipedia article.)

75 million years ago, Xenu was the ruler of a Galactic Confederacy which consisted of 26 stars and 76 planets including Earth, which was then known as Teegeeack. The planets were overpopulated, each having on average 178 billion people. The Galactic Confederacy's civilization was comparable to our own, with people "walking around in clothes which looked very remarkably like the clothes they wear this very minute" and using cars, trains and boats looking exactly the same as those "circa 1950, 1960" on Earth.

Xenu was about to be deposed from power, so he devised a plot to eliminate the excess population from his dominions. With the assistance of "renegades", he defeated the populace and the "Loyal Officers", a force for good that was opposed to Xenu. Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions of people to paralyse them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). The space planes were exact copies of Douglas DC-8s, "except the DC-8 had fans, propellers on it and the space plane didn't." DC-8s have jet engines, not propellers, although Hubbard may have meant the turbine fans.

When the space planes had reached Teegeeack/Earth, the paralysed people were unloaded and stacked around the bases of volcanoes across the planet. Hydrogen bombs were lowered into the volcanoes, and all were detonated simultaneously. Only a few people's physical bodies survived.

The now-disembodied victims' souls, which Hubbard called thetans, were blown into the air by the blast. They were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic ribbon" ("which also was a type of standing wave") and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to a type of cinema, where they were forced to watch a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. This implanted what Hubbard termed "various misleading data" (collectively termed the R6 implant) into the memories of the hapless thetans, "which has to do with God, the Devil, space opera, etcetera". This included all world religions, with Hubbard specifically attributing Roman Catholicism and the image of the Crucifixion to the influence of Xenu. The interior decoration of "all modern theaters" is also said by Hubbard to be due to an unconscious recollection of Xenu's implants. The two "implant stations" cited by Hubbard were said to have been located on Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

In addition to implanting new beliefs in the thetans, the images deprived them of their sense of identity. When the thetans left the projection areas, they started to cluster together in groups of a few thousand, having lost the ability to differentiate between each other. Each cluster of thetans gathered into one of the few remaining bodies that survived the explosion. These became what are known as body thetans, which are said to be still clinging to and adversely affecting everyone except those Scientologists who have performed the necessary steps to remove them.

Right. Space planes, hydrogen bombs, disembodied souls, electronic ribbons, and 3-D super colossal motion picture cinemas. The Wikipedia article also discusses the origins of the story (including, not surprisingly, Hubbard's diet of stimulants and depressants) and the influence of Xenu on Scientology. My favorite section, "Critiques of the Xenu Story," includes some wonderful comments:

Critics of Scientology have pointed out that there are many factual and scientific problems with the story of Xenu. There is no scientific evidence that the events Hubbard described ever took place, though in fairness Hubbard never did try to put a scientific gloss on the story.

• Hubbard did not elaborate on the number of space planes required to transport a population of some 13.5 trillion people. The Douglas DC-8, said to be an exact copy of Xenu's spaceships, seats a maximum of 250 people and has a payload of only around 40–50,000 kg, depending on the specific model. This means that, assuming the Galactic citizens had bodies about the same mass as humans, only about 600 to 700 human-sized frozen bodies could have been transported with each trip. It would therefore have required around 54.1 billion trips with everyone seated or 19.3 billion trips with frozen bodies packed more efficiently.
  
  
• Assuming the people were about the same size as humans, 76×178 billion×2 ft³ per alien is 184 cubic miles (766 km³). This is about ten percent of the volume of the Chicxulub Crater, the site of the asteroid impact that is credited with killing the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event 65 mya (million years ago). The frozen bodies would have had to have been stacked a mile (1.6 km) deep, covering an area more than six miles (10 km) across around 6 volcanos. Even assuming that they were all killed, their fossilised remains would certainly be visible in geological strata today. There is no sign of any such remains.
  
  
• The energy required to blow up Xenu's victims would also have been colossal. Thousands of hydrogen bombs with a cumulative explosive force equivalent to gigatonnes of TNT would have been needed. This would certainly have left physical traces; Forde lists plausible craters as the Manson crater (35 km, dated at 73.8 MYA), Eagle Butte (10 km) and Dumas (2 km, both 78–74 MYA).
  
  
• Such a huge release of energy, more than during a full-scale nuclear war, would have wrecked the Earth's climate, causing a nuclear winter and prompting a mass extinction of terrestrial life. The hydrogen bombs would have left a residue of radioactive isotopes which would have been easily detectable today. It has been suggested that Hubbard meant to explain the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event through the Xenu story, but got the dates wrong — 75 MYA as opposed to 65 MYA — though this is unproven. There is no evidence of mass extinctions around the earlier time.
  
  
• The volcanoes that Hubbard mentions in the story (notably Las Palmas and Hawaii) did not exist at the time that the events of Incident II are said to have taken place.
  
  
• Finally, the earlier Incident I is set four quadrillion years ago, which is nearly 300,000 times the currently accepted age of the Universe of 13.7 billion years.

There's more, but I'll leave you with that. When you need a mental break from whatever you're doing (studying, anyone?), you can rely on Wikipedia for a distraction.

Wikipedia

You've all heard of Wikipedia, right? I hope so. If not, check it out. In short, it's an online encyclopedia. As it describes itself, "Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation based in St. Petersburg, Florida." But it's so much more than that. It's a source of nearly infinite entertainment and mental wandering.

Each article in the Wikipedia has links to other relevant articles. Let's say I'm interested in Halloween, for example. I search for "Halloween" and am rewarded with a large article on the holiday:

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31, usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most commonly in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada and sometimes in Australia and New Zealand. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.

The form "Halloween" derives from Hallowe'en, an old contraction, still retained in Scotland, of "All Hallow's Eve," so called as it is the day before the Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called "All Hallows," derived from All Hallowed Souls.

The article goes on to discuss Halloween traditions, religious perspectives on Halloween, and characters that are commonly associated with the holiday. Let's say that I'm interested in Dracula, one of the characters listed in the article, so I click on the link to the Wikipedia entry on Dracula. The article begins with a basic description:

Dracula is a fictional character, inarguably the most famous vampire in literature. He was created by the Irish writer Bram Stoker in his 1897 horror novel of the same name.

Since I don't know much about Stoker, I click on his name and read the article about him. It turns out that he was born in a suburb of Dublin; I don't know much about Dublin so I jump to the Wikipedia article about it. I learn that that St. James's Gate Brewery (which produces Guinness) is in Dublin, so I click on the article on Guinness. One passage mentions a common misconception about Guinness:

Despite the "meal in a glass" reputation the beverage has among some non-Guinness drinkers, Guinness only contains 198 calories (838 kilojoules) per imperial pint (1460 kJ/l), less than an equal-sized serving of skimmed milk or orange juice.

From here I could go on to dozens of other articles. So, to recap, Wikipedia allowed me to learn in a stream-of-consciousness fashion:

Halloween -> Dracula -> Bram Stoker -> Dublin -> Guinness -> ???

And that's one reason why I love Wikipedia. The other reason is that I can find articles on the most ridiculous of topics. I'll post my thoughts on that tomorrow.

Enjoy the weekend!

Faith and Charity

I've been reflecting on this Newsweek article by Melinda Henneberger about faith, Hurricane Katrina, and taking care of those most in need.

Overturning the Gospels

Katrina has reminded us that Christian morality should be about responding to the wretched and loving the unlovable - not about other people's sex lives.

September 14, 2005

There was a great piece in Harper's last month, "The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong" by Bill McKibben, about how three out of four Americans believe the Bible teaches this: "God helps those who help themselves." The Gospel according to Mark? Luke? Actually, it was Ben Franklin who came up with these words to live by.

"The thing is," McKibben writes, "not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counterbiblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up."

Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have seen—and been unable to look away from— the direct result of this self-deception.

And if such tell-me-I'm-dreaming scenes as rats feeding on corpses in the streets—American streets—isn't enough to make us rethink the public-policy implications of turning the Gospel on its head in this way, then truly, God help us.

We as a nation—a proudly, increasingly loudly Christian nation—have somehow convinced ourselves that the selfish choice is usually the moral one, too. (What a deal!) You know how this works: It's wrong to help poor people because "handouts'' reward dependency and thus hurt more than they help. So, do the right thing—that is, walk right on by—and by all means hang on to your hard-earned cash.

Thus do we deny the working poor a living wage, resent welfare recipients expected to live on a few hundred dollars a month, object to the whopping .16 percent of our GNP that goes to foreign aid—and still manage to feel virtuous about all of the above.

Which is how "Christian" morality got to be all about other people's sex lives—and incredibly easy lifting compared to what Jesus actually asks of us. Defending traditional marriage? A breeze. Living in one? Less so. Telling gay people what they can't do? Piece o' cake. But responding to the wretched? Loving the unlovable? Forgiving the ever-so-occasionally annoying people you actually know? Hard work, as our president would say, and rather more of a stretch.

A lot of us are angry at our public officials just now, and rightly so. But we are complicit, too; top to bottom, we picked this government, which has certainly met our low expectations.

The Bush administration made deep and then still deeper cuts in antipoverty programs, and we liked that. (The genius of the whole Republican program, in fact, is that it not only offers tax cuts and morality, but tax cuts as morality. Americans do, I think, want to feel they are doing the right thing, and when I hear an opponent of abortion rights say, "I'm voting for the most vulnerable, the unborn," I have to respect that. Of course, we also like tax breaks and cheap gas and cranking the thermostat up and down—so when Republicans play to both our better angels and our less altruistic ones, it's not that tough a sell.)

But have Democrats loudly decried the inhumanity—or even the hidden, deferred costs of the Bush cuts in services to the most vulnerable among the already born? Heavens, no, with a handful of exceptions, such as former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, who spoke every single day of his campaign—and ever since—about our responsibilities toward those struggling just to get by in the "other America."

Most party leaders are still busy emulating Bill Clinton, who felt their pain and cut their benefits—and made his fellow Dems ashamed to show any hint of a "bleeding heart." Clinton's imitators haven't his skills, though, so his bloodless, Republican Lite legacy has been a political as well as moral disaster.

That's not, of course, because voters give a hoot about poverty, but because along with the defining moral strength of its commitment to the underclass went most of the party's self-confidence, and all of its fervor.

Incredibly, they even ceded the discussion of compassion to President Bush, a man who has always struck me as empathy-free—to an odd extent, really, as we saw again last week when he cracked jokes about his carousing days on his first trip to the Gulf Coast.

Immediately after the disaster, Bush quickly intervened—to make it possible for refiners to produce dirtier gasoline. He has since zapped working people on the Gulf Coast all over again by suspending the 1931 law that requires employers to pay the prevailing wage to workers on all federally financed projects.

Others in his party have expressed concern about all the freebies evacuees will be enjoying: "How do you separate the needy from those who just want a $2,000 handout?" Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski asked—by way of explaining why debit cards for Katrina victims were a bad idea.

So far, though, I'd love to be wrong, I see no reason to think the president's sinking poll numbers will persuade him that there's more to (pro-)life than opposing abortion.

I still dare to hope Democrats may yet remember why they are Democrats, though. And that would be a real come-to-Jesus moment.

The Big Day

The biochem exam is here! Wish me luck.

By the Numbers

My life, by the numbers:

• Class days since I started med school: 21
  
• Class days since I started biochemistry: 13
  
• Class days until my biochem exam: 3
  
• Hours until my biochem exam: 64
  
• Hours of lecture, review, or other structured academic time before the exam: 16
  
• Hours of study time before the exam (projected): 24-28
  
• Times I have worried that typing this blog entry will take too long (within last 5 minutes): 3
  
  
• Number of chemicals, enzymes, or reactions I need to know for this exam (approx): 250-300
  
• Percent of which I understand little or nothing: 20%
• Percent of which I understand at a bare minimum: 50%
  
• Percent of which I understand comfortably: 30%
  
  
• Faculy members who equated med school to "drinking from a fire hydrant" sometime this week: 2
  
• Consecutive hours studying at Starbucks on Sunday: 7.5
• Beverages purchased during that time: 3
  
• Cost of said beverages: $7.10
  
• Cost of studying at Starbucks, per hour: $0.95
  
• Percent of roommates who agree this is a reasonable cost: 100%
  
  
• Free meals at school since classes started (avg/week): 1.5
  
• Percent of free meals consisting of pizza, salad, and soda: 80%
  
  
• Score I need to pass this exam: 65%
  
• Score I received in a dream last night: 53%
  
• Percent of classmates who have reported having dreams about the exam: 70%
  
• Percent of students who pass the exam in their dreams: 0%
  

Busy

I had forgotten what it was like to be a student. And, not surprisingly, med school is taking the student experience to a whole new level.

For example, I never thought I would see so many of my classmates studying at Starbucks...on Friday...at 10pm. Or at the library the next morning at 9am. Yet, at the same time, most of my classmates are friendly and willing to help each other. I'm happy that the dreaded competitiveness of med school has yet to materialize. (Knocking on wood...)

"Busy" was good title for this post when I started writing it, but "overwhelmed" might be a little more accurate now that I think about it. There's just so much to learn...and each day we're asked to learn more and more and more.

Music has been so important over the last week of intense studying. I'm spending 4 to 8 hours in each location when I study, so music helps keep me sane. And right now, I am reminded that Ottmar Liebert is truly a god among men. I can't imagine better studying music.

Back to the books. Four days until the exam. Then the party. :-)

Mood: Tired, confused, overwhelmed, but generally optimistic. (And contradictory, I suppose...)
Song: Ottmar Liebert, "Rome in May/Spanish Steps"

NYT: "Waiting for a Leader"

The NYT lead editorial today finally acknowledged the truth: Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina and the disaster in New Orleans has been horrendous:

September 1, 2005

Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

Inspiration...or not.

Tonight was my first night at the new jujitsu gym. Pretty cool place. I will blog about it later.

After jujitsu, I went to Starbucks to study. I had a ton of great blogging ideas, but then I came home, got tired, and decided that it would have to wait.

I bet I'll look at this post tomorrow and have absolutely no recollection as to what I was going to write...

ahhhhhhhhhhh............

Sleep such a wonderful thing. I know I'll have to go without it for much of the next four (eight? ten?) years, but for now I can enjoy sleeping in both days of this weekend. I hadn't had a full night's sleep since orientation, and I was getting pretty sick. After two nights of 10-12 hours' sleep, I feel much better.

Today we have the annual Case Fall Picnic, where each of the med school "societies" compete for some sort of prize. (The societies are arbitrary groups that students are assigned to during their first year for advising purposes.) It sounds like it's going to be a pretty good time. In the afternoon, I'll probably leave the picnic a little early to go to the Cleveland-area Stanford Send-Off Party...it's an event for the students who are preparing to begin their freshman year at Stanford, and local alumni are encouraged to attend to talk with the students, give advice, and generally get them excited to begin school.

As far as med school is concerned, I'm pondering whether to do the joint degree program in bioethics. I'm a huge fan of joint degree programs (an additional degree for no additional cost?), but I'm really not sure which one I like most. My friend David is doing the MD/MBA program, but he started taking classes last summer and I would probably have to dedicate this upcoming summer to MBA classes if I wanted to complete both degrees in four years.

I was also interested in the master's degree in applied anatomy, especially the fact that students in the program score a full standard deviation above the Case average (which is already reasonably high). But I don't want to be a surgeon (the group that is usually most dedicated to anatomy) and my impression is that the program is pretty intense.

There's also the joint degree program in bioethics, which originally was not of much interest to me. After our bioethics lectures during the first two weeks, though, I had a lot to think about. The program isn't supposed to be that hard, and it would give me a lot more training to face some of the difficult decisions I'll have to make as a doctor. The program is supposed to be fairly easy, at least when compared to the other two programs. I don't really want to be an ethicist exactly, but I think I would like to know more about the topic. Fortunately, I have some time to make the decision about the program...

Off to the picnic!

Mood: Relaxed
Song: Jason Mraz, "The Remedy" (acoustic) / BT, "Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)"

Progress

We started biochem today, and so far I love it. I'm sure I will soon learn to hate it, but for now I'm excited to be studying real science again....it has been a pretty long time for me. Don't tell anyone, but I actually enjoyed our five hours of lecture this morning. :-)

I'm also making progress on finally catching up on sleep. I took a 4-hour nap this afternoon, and tonight it looks like I'll be in bed before 11:00. I'm also sick, which sucks, but it's a good reason to finally get my sleep schedule arranged to where it needs to be.

Mood: Other than being sick, I'm in a pretty good mood. Friday is almost here.
Song: Uncle Kracker, "In A Little While"

Confidentiality

This morning's lecture on patient confidentiality just began. It's one of several lectures we will have on bioethical issues. It has been particularly interesting when the lecturers (all of whom are bioethicists) make the point that doctors do not always obey certain expectations of laypeople. Truthtelling in medicine, for example, is a relatively new idea. We've had several quotes from famous physicians -- from Hippocrates to individuals just a few decades ago -- who insisted that there was no need (nor any benefit) to telling a patient about a serious diagnosis. It was believed that telling the patient this bad news would merely worsen his or her condition. Instead, it was commonly accepted to warn the patient's family and let them take care of the issue. We were asked, "Would you rather (a) be honest with your patient or (b) provide the best health outcome for your patient?" There was some pretty strong debate on that question.

Patient autonomy is another bioethical issue. We usually hold autonomy to a pretty high standard, but the lecturers brought up numerous situations in which most of us agreed that patient autonomy could potentially be superceded. And now we're talking about confidentiality; as usual, we're finding some situations in which confidentiality is paramount and others in which we defer to the principles of justice, beneficence, or "doing no harm." And we're barely scraping the surface of the issues we'll face in the clinics and hospitals. It's an intimidating feeling.

Who Needs Sleep?

Let's see how many nights in a row I can get to bed before midnight. I haven't had a full night's sleep in nearly two weeks, and I'm starting to get sick, so I think sleep is pretty important.

In other news, my small group made a ton of progress on our project. I'm excited that we're finally almost done with it -- it has been a great way to meet people, but I'd rather start on the real med school classes. Biochem starts Thursday...

And so it begins...

So far, so good. We just started the second week of class...and we have our first exam on Wednesday! Our first class (or "committee" according to the Case nomenclature) is pretty easy -- we're covering the fundamentals of biostatistics, epidemiology, study design, etc., as well as bioethics and health economics. It's not too hard, especially since I already covered most of the material in my master's degree program.

Case provides all first and second year medical students with a desk in a study room. It sounds really basic -- it's just a desk with electrical and ethernet connections for a laptop -- but so far it has had a huge impact on my schedule and ability to study. The study rooms are right next to our lecture room, so we're never far from a place to work (instead of having to walk to a library), and there are usually people in the study room who you can talk to if you have questions about a lecture topic. I'm pretty sure this room will be a major part of my life this year.

Alright, enough blogging. Back to the problem set, then to the gym, then to a group project meeting, then home by 10:00 or so.

Mood: Focused
Song: Jason Mraz, "Wordplay"

PS - Jason Mraz is coming to the House of Blues in Cleveland in October. Anyone interested?

Update from Cleveland

Wow. The last few weeks have absolutely flown by. I moved to Cleveland, took a short vacation to Portland, and returned to Cleveland to begin orientation at Case. I'm so busy with the basics -- i.e., moving into my house -- that I don't even feel like I have time to think about school. That better change soon!

Don't Use U-Haul

U-Haul is among the most frustrating and least competent companies I've ever seen. I was originally going to write a lengthy story about how they screwed me over multiple times during my move, but I decided that I preferred not to lose another hour of my life thanks to them. In short, I will recommend that everyone look at Don't Use U-Haul and rent from another company. Penske seems to get good reviews from my soon-to-be classmates.

Moving complete!

After two months of thinking about moving, a week of packing, a few days of getting screwed by U-Haul (which I will soon write about), a long drive, and a lot of carrying, I am finally moved into my house in Cleveland. I'm back in Portland, Oregon to visit my family for the week.

Time to relax......

Packing day!

The big day is here! Time to pack everying up. We won't drive to Cleveland until tomorrow, but there is a lot to do between now than then.

I'll be unplugging the internet connection in a few minutes so I can return the equipment to my ISP.

As my running teammates used to say before a particularly brutal workout, I'll see you on the other side...

Mood: Anxious, excited.
Song: Acoustic Alchemy, "The Alchemist"; Patrick Park, "Something Pretty"; Aerosmith, "Dream On"

Sleep

Wow, I feel better. I was planning to get up this morning to see the Washington Monument, but that meant I would have needed to get up at 7:30 to go wait in line for tickets. No thank you. Instead I slept in and dedicated today to packing.

Sleep really does help with the pre-moving anxiety. And I'm sure I'll feel even better once I make a lot of progress on packing today.

Boxes and tape, here I come.......

Everything You Leave Behind

Hmmmm. The emotionally difficult part of moving is starting to set in. I've been trying to get away from it for a long time, trying to fill my schedule with as many activities as possible so I don't have to think about moving. But now it's very, very close. And I have to deal with it.

I'm not really sure why this move is so difficult. (pause) I suppose that's not entirely true. I have a pretty good idea of why it's different. When I left California, I was desperate for a change of location. I love northern CA, but it was time for me to leave. Overall, it wasn't that hard. (I think?) I was in Baltimore for 10 months -- long enough to meet people in my Hopkins program, but not really long enough to feel established. I was really excited to move to DC, and Baltimore was close enough that I could go back and visit if I wanted to. I think that moving down to DC wasn't too hard emotionally. But now? Now I'm happy in DC. I feel settled, I have a nice group of friends, I enjoy(ed) my job, etc. I have no reason to leave...except for the fact that I have a great opportunity to start a completely new career. I'm wishing that I had deferred school another year, but I'm pretty sure that I would have regretted that decision once I got sick of work...probably by October or November.

Timing is everything in life, a friend wrote to me the other day. True. I've wanted to go to medical school for years and years now, so I should be excited that I finally have that opportunity. Now that I have the chance to go, however, I'm tortured by the fact that I have to leave after getting settled for the first time in two years. Realistically speaking, I feel professionally settled for the first time...ever? My job at Stanford after graduation was a good experience for me, but "rewarding" certainly isn't the first word I would associate with it. At Lewin, I felt like I was producing high-quality work, learning consistently, and establishing a solid base of professional experience. I also feel socially and emotionally settled; I'm more comfortable with my current friends in DC than with many of the people I knew at Hopkins last year. There are also people in DC who I've known just a few months -- or even less, in a few cases -- who I would get to know better if I just had more time.

I think that loneliness is the major feeling I have right now. I'm not really sure why -- I haven't left DC yet, so it seems like I shouldn't be missing people yet. But I've already said a lot of goodbyes, and many of them feel incomplete. The good news is that I checked flights from Cleveland to DC and found that they're only ~$120 or so. Not too bad for a long weekend visit.

As usual, sleep will probably help me feel better about things. Let's hope.

Mood: Lonely, anxious, frustrated. Cheerful, eh?
Song: Coldplay, "White Shadows" and "Fix You"

One small step...

Friday was my last day of work. Saturday was my first day on the beach in many, many months, and today marked the start of my final week in DC...for now, at least.

Now what do I do? I have a week until I move. I'd like to avoid thinking about my departure for as long as possible. It doesn't mean that I won't start packing or prepare to leave, but I'll feel better if I can avoid thinking about the people in DC who I won't see for a long time. With that in mind, I'm going to visit the Air & Space Museum tomorrow (the Dulles annex, for those of you who are familiar with it) and then tour the Capitol on Wednesday.

I actually feel better about leaving DC now that I'm done with work. I feel like it's the first small step towards trading this reality for another one.

Sine Qua Non

I'm going to miss a lot of people in DC, many of whom I don't know nearly as well as I would like. Here's a toast to missing your friends and longing to see people again....it's okay to feel bad if it's for all the right reasons. This speech reminds me of that truth.

---

"Love is life's longing for itself, says the Prophet, in a book by Kahlil Gibran. For me, that comes the closest to explaining why we love you -- which is why we are working in this school district, why is why we are in this world. Because most of us -- teachers, principals, secretaries, coaches, administrators, patents, volunteers -- are not here for the money or the intellectual challenge or because we have no other choice; we are here for love.

"I myself did not sign on to this job for love. I signed on to the school board to pursue and social and political ideal. Three years later I have met with little success in that regard, but I gained something else instead. I have learned at gut level what I had known only in theory: that tangible results and official accomplishments are not the only measure of success in work and in life.

"The first years I was on the board I met with a group of Lakeridge kids to talk about school issues. These students came to my house once a month to share stories, ask questions, offer ideas; there were savvy and insightful and often drop-dead funny, open an generous, honest and thoughtful, and -- most amazingly -- they trusted me and each other. They taught me, by example, what I was really here for, and it wasn't the academic task. I was here for them, and for me, and for the connection between us. I was here for love.

"Caring, helping, supporting one another; feeling sympathy, affection, excitement; sharing a personal connection, being on the same wavelength: love is the sine qua non, the essential element, without which nothing we do has meaning or purpose or lasting value.

"But of course, love is not just warm and fuzzy, like a Hallmark card or a Meg Ryan movie -- as you probably know, it can be 10 parts pain to 1 part pleasure. No, it is both reward and punishment for being alive, for getting involved, for leading with your heart. I said to my friend, 16-year old Alexis, "I've decided to talk about love at graduation. Tell me something about love, Alexis." "Love," she says, "it sucks." So I had to give Alexis a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit -- we education people are always giving people books -- wherein the Skin Horse places the pain of love in its proper context, the context of being real.

When a child loves you for a long long time," the Skin Horse says, "not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to toys who break easily, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But those things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can'y be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"Which is to say, we are here because we need you as much as you need us -- you make us glad and proud, exhausted and used up -- you make us Real.

"Love is life's longing for itself. And we see our lives reflected in yours; in your incessant guitar-playing, your interminable phone conversations, your obsessions and idiosyncrasies...we see ourselves reflected in you, in your excuses and apathy and infuriating procrastination, in your heartbreaking misery and despair, in your painfully familiar self-consciousness and shyness, in your stubbornness, your impatience, your hopefulness when the odds are terrible, in your disappointment with the world, in your screw-ups and failures, in your energy and determination and fundamental goodness -- you remind us of nobody like ourselves. And thus you keep us connected -- hopeful, vulnerable, and still believing in love.

"So. I recommend that you stay open to taking the emotional venture, the personal risk, that you stay open to life and to love. Imperfect as it is, painful as it can be, it still comes back more than anything else ever will. When your heart lurches, trust it -- it knows the work you should be doing, the risk you should be taking, the person you should be getting to know.

"And if you remember nothing else from high school, not the Pythagorean Theorem or the taxonomic classifications, remember this: you are loved. That's why we are here. And everyone single one of you will be sorely missed -- as the Skin Horse said, it hurts sometimes."

Susan Blackman
Lakeridge High School graduation
June 5, 1997

Reflection on 12 months in DC

I started this post about three weeks ago. "One month left in DC," I wrote. Now it's down to 10 days. And I'm still not ready to leave.

As I wrote in the first post...Now that I've told my coworkers, I can say it on here -- I'm moving to Cleveland, Ohio to start medical school at Case Western Reserve University (aka "Case").

The last month has been pretty complicated, to say the least. I'm making a major life transition so I've been reflecting on my DC experience as well as my entire East Coast experience over the last two years.

• This year I've been frustrated with the people I know from Johns Hopkins; it seems like many of my friendships have deteriorated and that I'm not really in touch with that group of people anymore. I'm used to maintaining friendships pretty well, so I'm not thrilled by the fact that these don't seem to be lasting. I'm developing some good friendships with people at work, but the day after tomorrow is my last day on the job.
  
  
• It's a cliche, but it's true -- I feel like I just got here. More specifically, I feel like I just got settled. After spending months on med school applications and now having much of life, I finally feel like I have a solid network of friends, a job I enjoy, and a city I understand relatively well. And now, of course, I have to leave.
  
  
• Dating. After going on a respectable number of so-so dates, I seem to have finally figured things out in that regard. Or at least I've remembered how dating works. And now I get to leave and start anew.

I'm already planning to return to DC next summer to work on research for school. I'm expecting just a tiny bit of separation anxiety. Not a good sign!

(sigh) I'm sure I will look back in a month and laugh about how stressed I was about everything. I'm excited about school and am sure it will be a great experience, but for now I'm just sad to be leaving DC.

Mood: Nervous, excited, worries, a little overwhelmed.
Songs: Jason Mraz, "Wordplay" / Carbon Leaf, "What About Everything?" / Alabama, "I'm in a Hurry and Don't Know Why" / Coldplay, "Fix You"

When Effort Goes Too Far

The purpose of weight lifting is to develop muscle mass and build strength, right? More specifically, weight machines can help people isolate certain muscles and (ideally) develop them with smooth, controlled motions.

Apparently there is a guy at my gym who doesn't understand the latter half of this. While most people occasionally look a little strange when they're working out (myself included), this guy takes it to a whole new level. Think of a leg curl machine like this. Instead of merely curling his legs, this guy gets his whole body into the motion. He lifts up his head and arms, then slams them down onto the table/machine in an effort to gather momentum for his legs. It looks ridiculous and you can hear it across the gym.

That's it. No profound message...just people looking silly.

Time Management

Certain people at work don't seem to communicate very well, especially the managers. At first, my schedule this week looked something like this:

South Dakota project - 50% of time
Delaware project - 50 of time
Ohio project - 75% of time
California project - 75% of time

Hmmm. That's 250% for the week. Recognizing that this would be quite difficult, I politely sought out each of my bosses/managers and explained that I couldn't actually work 20 hours per day. They agreed that I'd been given too many tasks on some projects and that things were certainly more flexible that that.

After consulting with each other, the four different managers indicated that I should spend my time this way:

South Dakota project - 50% of time
Delaware project - 50 of time
Ohio project - 75% of time
California project - 75% of time

Yup. Same thing. With my 17-hour workday today, that sounds about right. Keep in mind, I should have seen this coming about a month ago (oh, wait, I did). It won't be the end of the world when things don't get done, but they won't be happy.

For the next 5 hours, my schedule is as follows:

Sleep -- 100%

Much better. :-)

Mood: Overwhelmed. (Really?)
Song: Jimmy Eat World, "Pain"

Graduation!

I graduated! It was fun but a little strange -- I haven't taken classes in a year, and now I'm graduating? Nonetheless, it was good to see everyone, take a lot of pictures, and reflect on the last two years. It's the end of an era for me.

Mood: Cheerful
Song: The Postal Service, "Such Great Heights"

MIT pranksters succeed again

You've got to hand it to the kids at MIT...for a science nerd like myself, this is pretty funny.

CNN:

In a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference.

The paper itself:

• Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy (pdf).

Washington and Jefferson

Here's a photo from the south side of the Tidal Basin. The white flowers you see are the cherry blossoms. 

Scenes from DC

Saturday was a beautiful spring day in Washington. I was at the annual cherry blossom festival and took this (slightly tilted) photo of the Jefferson Memorial.
 

Such Unbelievable Hypocrisy

I wrote this last week but was so disgusted by ongoing events that I didn't want to write any more. Since I already finished it, though, I figured I might as well post it.

Perhaps the thing I despise most about this administration is its unending hypocrisy.

The Terri Schiavo case brings up all sorts of issues: life, liberty, ethics, separation of powers, the role of the courts, the role of Congress, the role of physicians, medical technology, end-of-life care, medical decision-making, the role of government in health, etc. The list could fill a couple pages, I'm sure.

On Monday, the White House released the following statement by the President:

Today, I signed into law a bill that will allow Federal courts to hear a claim by or on behalf of Terri Schiavo for violation of her rights relating to the withholding or withdrawal of food, fluids, or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life. In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life. This presumption is especially critical for those like Terri Schiavo who live at the mercy of others. I appreciate the bipartisan action by the Members of Congress to pass this bill. I will continue to stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans, including those with disabilities.

US Newswire reported similar a statement from Tom Delay:

Tonight we have given Terri Schiavo all we could: a chance to live," DeLay said. "After four days of words, the best of them uttered in prayer, Congress has acted, and a life may have been saved. Democrats and Republicans, congressmen and senators all deserve respect and gratitude for their commitment to giving Mrs. Schiavo the chance we all deserve."

Hmmm. Let's extract some quotations from these statements....

• Our society should "have a presumption in favor of life" for people who "live at the mercy of others,” including “those with disabilities.”
  
• Pres. Bush wishes to support those who are "defending life for all Americans."
  
• The congressional action for Mrs. Schiavo may have "saved a life."
  
• Tom Delay belives that "we all deserve...the chance to live."

..and identify some core principles. For example, society and government should:

• Favor/defend/protect life.
  
• Favor/defend/protect the lives of individuals who are disabled or who are otherwise unable to provide for themselves.

Now, let's look at some recent policy decisions by the Bush administration:

• Proposed cutting $15 billion from Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program). For those don’t know, Medicaid is a public health insurance program that covers over 52 million of the poorest people in our country. We already have 45 million uninsured people in this country, and these cuts will certainly add to that population. And what happens to individuals without health insurance? They die. According to the Institute of Medicine, more than 18,000 Americans aged 25 to 64 will die this year because they don't have health insurance. That's one death every 30 minutes. Defending life for all Americans? Of course.
  
  
• Cut federal funding for the housing of disabled individuals, including "the mentally ill and physically handicapped." Quoting the NYT, "The proposal appears to comport with the administration's broader determination to trim domestic programs in the face of record deficits." Sure, that makes plenty of sense. After all, the $118 million cut to this program is pretty important when we're cutting taxes by hundreds of billion of dollars over ten years. Why should we help poor people get housing when we can help the uber-wealthy retain more of their income? Seems totally reasonable to me. After all, it's not like these these disabled and mentally ill people live at the mercy of others. They'll certainly adapt to life on the street. The uber-wealthy beneficiaries of the Bush administration tax cuts, in contrast, live at the mercy of our tyrannical progressive tax system and would be devastated by any loss of income.
  
  
• Cut $658 million from the Women, Children and Infants (WIC) program. As Broder writes in the Washington Post, WIC is "a major preventative against low-weight babies." Apparently the Bush administration believes that a baby's chance to eat (and live) should be proporational to the economic class of its parents. And while Bush seems quite concerned that Terri Schiavo gets her feeding tube, he doesn't seem bothered by the idea of witholding food vouchers from mothers and children. Interesting...it seems like a presumption in favor of life would be quite similar to a presumption in favor of food for babies. I guess I was wrong.
  

Home again. Again.

Another two days, another four flights. Having 6:00am flights on two consecutive days is really not much fun.

I was supposed to fly to Chicago on Sunday afternoon (and from there to Springfield, IL). I get to the airport and try to check in; the e-ticket machine can't find my reservation, so an agent instructs me to wait in line. I indicate that my flight time is rapidly approaching, but to no avail. I wait in line, and by the time I get helped by an agent I have entered the 30-minutes-before-the-flight window. The agent tries to book me for another flight...only to discover that my original ticket was never issued.

Reserved? Yes.
Confirmed? Yes.
Issued? In other words, purchased? No.

Apparently the confirmation number from by my corporate travel office merely confirmed...that my tickets had been confirmed. And reserved. But not purchased. Get it?

Anyway, I booked a flight for Monday morning at 6am, made it to Springfield by 9:00am, and was only a few minutes late to my morning meeting (with coworkers whose tickets had been confirmed and purhased). The rest of the day was filled with meetings. And a short nap.

This morning, my coworkers and I had a 6am flight from Springfield to Chicago. More meetings in Chicago, a delayed flight back to DC, and a generally long day. But I'm back in my apartment now, expressing joy about being home after a long trip...again.

Now I sleep. :-)

Mood: Tired!
Song: AFI, "Silver and Cold"

Highway Mystery

I see this every day when I drive home, but I have no idea what it means. Any suggetions? 

Home Sweet Home

Home, finally. Much better.

The last three weeks have been incredibly busy. I've had something like 13 flights in 23 days. I have a trip to Chicago next week, but at least I'll have a few days at home before then. Today I organized my work responsibilites, bought a ton of groceries, cleaned the apartment, and paid my bills. And finally I feel like I'm getting back to normal life.

The District is apparently due for a major snowstorm tonight...light snow beginning at 4am, "heavy" snow (?) from 8am to 3pm. Ought to make for an interesting day tomorrow.

Time to sleep! :-)

Mood: Relaxed
Song: U2, "In a Little While"

Deja Vu

From CNN.com this afternoon...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that Iran must live up to its international obligations to halt its nuclear program or the next steps are in the offing. "And I think everybody understands what the 'next steps' mean," Rice told reporters after a meeting with NATO foreign ministers and European Union officials.

Doesn't this sound just a little too familiar?

All Good Things

I watch more TV than I should. I love a good drama, and I'm a sucker for a few other shows. There's one new TV show (new to me, at least) that I really enjoy - Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - although not for any reason related to construction or home design. In many ways, it reminds me of my true favorite show: The West Wing.

Don't get me wrong; as far as I can tell, the original Extreme Makeover is terrible, both in its design and its execution. I suppose it's not a bad thing to make people feel better about themselves, but I don't think society needs anything else encouraging cosmetic surgery. It seems like the core purpose of the show is to help people, but the message of the show is that beauty is skin deep. That's it.

Home Edition seems to be the same purpose, except with the right message. Instead of convincing people they need surgery to be beautiful, the show builds a new home for a family in need. They find families that really need the help: a large family with a parent who recently passed away, a family with a sick child who needs purified air throughout the house to avoid fatal illnesses, and more. It's hard not to smile when you see a deserving family get a little help from the Home Edition crew and the many local builders, contractors, and volunteers who work to build the new home. Each episode renews my faith in humanity. I know it sounds silly, but it's true.

The West Wing has a similar effect on me. The show has definitely been through its brightest days, and many of the former regular viewers have moved on. But I continue to stick with it. I can't say that every episode inspires me, and I can't deny that certain dramatic elements are a bit overdone at times. (It's a drama, after all.) Once in a while, though, an episode will come together in just the right way to remind me of my love for public service. I love politics, yes, but The West Wing has the ability to remind me of more than that. It helps me see the big picture, the way government is supposed to work. I don't mean a certain political ideology or policy goal; I'm talking about the way that democracy should work and the commitment that our elected leaders should have for serving the greater good. It's just a TV show, I realize, but it's the best kind of TV out there. It can be the kind of story that makes me sit back and think about my passion for public service and redouble my commitment to getting there someday. It reminds me of all the good things that I believe this country can be about, and the good that people can achieve.

The West Wing gives me hope.

R & R

Today was a day of rest and relaxation. I slept in, did some reading, and had coffee with a friend. I also went to the gym, which probably doesn't qualify as rest or relaxation, but I signed up just a few days ago and wanted to get started on my workout plans. Tonight was slow, and I'm heading to bed relatively early. For me, that alone is a pretty big accomplishment.

Mood: Calm.
Song: The Killers, "Mr. Brightside"

Search Results

I looked through the search engine results that have led people to this site. Two of my favorites were:

• hallelujah chorus alarm clock and
  
• snack cracker toppings.

Hmmmmm. Snack cracker toppings. Nothing wrong with that.

One Year Ago...

And with wind chill, it was somewhere around -30'F.

I took this photo in early January 2004 at a Clark 2004 rally at which I was working.

I was wearing six or seven layers of clothes, including a couple layers of ski clothes, plus gloves and three sets of liners, a balaclava, a nose-and-mouth facemask, two fleece hats, a double-layered ski jacket, ski goggles, and more. Breathing was painful, and it was fairly common (albeit very strange) to feel the sensation of your eyelashes freezing.

Being inside would have been smart, but instead I was directing traffic in a parking lot and helping people get out of their cars. Once everyone had arrived at the rally, I ran over to the sign, took this picture, and ran inside.

Hello Again

I've noticed something about my blog posts over the last six months - every time I say that I will write "soon" or "tomorrow" or something like that, I don't end up writing again for at least a couple weeks. Now I'll try to take the opposite approach; maybe I won't write again for another couple weeks.

DC is cold. Very cold. It was around 10'F this morning when I woke up. Ouch. It's not quite as bad as my experience in New Hampshire during the primaries last year, but it's still pretty cold. At least now I'm not standing outside during the morning rush hour, waving signs frantically at cars as I slowly froze to death. I'll see if I can find the Dallas Morning News article that I was in; with wind chill, our daytime highs were in the single digits. And in the early morning? Easily twenty or thirty below. So 10'F is nothing to worry about.

I had a great weekend, and I'm feeling pretty good about this upcoming week. It will be a busy week at work, but I'll finally get around to checking out my new gym!

Mood: Calm, sleepy.
Song: Ottmar Liebert, "Spanish Steps (Rome in May)"

What a Great Day!

Today was a very good start to 2005. The DC weather was incredible -- clear skies and a high of nearly 70 degrees. I slept in, unpacked my luggage from last weekend, cleaned my entire apartment, went running for the first time in months, caught a episodes of Iron Chef: America and relaxed for a few hours. The run was pretty exhausting, but that's what I get for (a) not running in 4 months and (b) running soon after recovering from food poisoning (and, hence, not eating for a couple days). More on that tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I will create my plan for getting back in shape, finish Catch-22, and cook for the first time since last summer.

It's past 3am now, but that's fine when I consider what a great day it was. If it weren't so late, I might actually write some reasonably long posts like I used to....it just seems like I don't have any particularly interesting stories right now. We'll see what I can think of tomorrow...

Mood: Optimistic.
Song: Beethoven, Symphony No. 9: Molto Vivace (2nd Movement)

Happy New Year!

Happy 2005, everyone. I feel good about this year.