I suppose I should get a little Christmas spirit here with a meme.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hands down, Hot chocolate but without marshmallows. I always pick out the marshmallows to eat them first.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Strange, never thought about Santa not wrapping gifts. Although I do remember a year when Santa "hid" a new bicycyle because it was too big to wrap.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Always had colored lights growing up but my tree has white. I prefer white or blue now not sure why.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Oh I would if there would be anyone around to kiss.

5. When do you put your decorations up? The weekend after Christmas. Although I'm rethinking that for next year because my kitty has too much fun with the decorations

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Excluding dessert?! Probably my mom's cheesy potatoes (real cheese, can't eat fake cheese)

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Driving home from grandparent's house on Christmas eve listening to Christmas carols and watching the snow fall.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? My parents say my sister told me but I didn't believe her so I decided to sneak out to prove her wrong. I was sadly disappointed to find my mom stuffing the stockings.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Nope. Although with trying to figure out when everyone can get together we might this year.

10. What kind of cookies does Santa get set out for him? We never left cookies for Santa.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love to look at it, dread to be out it in.

12. Can you ice skate? I'm too clumsy. I've done it a couple times and all I remember are painful ankles.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Not really

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? family.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? My mom's green stuff. I love that stuff.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? I'm not so sure that I have one. I do remember that I would always get up early on Christmas morning and watch It's a Wonderful Life with my dad before everyone else got up.

17. What tops your tree? I don't have a topper. I guess I couldn't find one that suited me.

18. Which do you prefer Giving or Receiving? Hard question because the last couple of years I have been so poor that I can't afford to buy presents for anyone but the niece and nephew. I do love shopping and I like trying to find the perfect gift for someone. I'm actually a little weird about receiving gifts. I guess I feel like I have everything I need.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Carol? I love O' Holy Night but only when it is sung well.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Yum. I don't eat them much anymore but I like them. But beware, I've gotten unlucky a couple of times and eaten an unflavored one. Apparently they make some just for decoration so they don't put any flavoring in them. Then they are icky.

If I don't talk to you, Happy Holidays!

Hole #1 or #2

I'm a little pissed. My attending told me two days ago that we would be done Friday at noon so silly me made plans to meet friends for dinner in a town 2 hours away. Well guess what, this morning he told me that he's been so busy this week that actually we'll be working until 5pm tomorrow. Damn him, doesn't he realize that you can't renig (is this a word) on early weekend promises?

Funny story about him though. We were in the room examining a patient. He actually was doing the exam and I was watching. Well sort watching because out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge spider crawling across the floor towards us. I didn't want to say anything about it in front of the patient but it started getting closer so I did the stupid girl thing and was like "Um, Dr. M. there's a huge spider coming at me. Can you kill it?" Yeah, I actually interrupted the Dr. to ask him to kill the spider. Which he did but asked me to continue the exam with the patient. So, he goes behind the patient (who was facing away from the spider)to take care of it. Trying to be funny the patient says, "The spider's not going to crawl up my leg or anything is it?" To which Dr. M said "Oh, no" but just then I look over and the spider is crawling up Dr. M's leg. He then starts doing this little dance/leg shaking thing and then starts stomping/jumping up and down to kill the spider . I'm watching the whole thing trying my damnedest not to burst out laughing because the patient sees nothing. So after the patient leaves Dr M. was like "Yeah, I really wanted to scream as the spider was on my leg, but I tried to play it cool for the patient's sake."

I need a debate settled. This morning I was giving a friend a hard time because he wants to specialize in GI. I said, "Man, you're going to be shoving your hands up asses all the time." Since I may want to do OB/Gyn he said "well, you'll have your hands up crotches all day." (aren't we so politically correct) So, which is worse, butts or vaginas? I argue butts because poop comes out of them. Of course the other area can be gross too...

No posts tomorrow or Saturday (I'm failing the every day thing already) because I'll be out of town.

We'll try it for a month

Okay, so I've been gone for a really long time and most likely no one even checks on this blog anymore, but... Apparently there is this thing going around about blogging every day for the month of November so I thought I'd try. No guarantee it'll be everyday because I'm pretty busy. I'm not sure what I'll talk about. Probably just random tidbits.

No boring updates here but I'll mention that I have finished my 12wk internal medicine rotation and am smack dab in the middle of my 12 wk surgery rotation. Just to give you a little idea about what I'm up to. I'm not loving this surgery rotation. Surgeries are really interesting but I just don't like surgeons I guess. See, the thing with surgeons is that the field is still very male dominated. My med school class is about 50/50 male to female but the ratio for practicing physicians is much lower. Then if you look at certain fields like surgery it's lower still. As far as I know, the surgical faculty at my school has all of 1 female and she's not really a surgeon per se. She does ear/nose/throat so really just tonsillectomies and things of that nature. The rest are men. Some of them are okay but the group of surgeons I've been with are kinda like "the boys club." They make derogatory comments to nurses in the OR and pretty much ignore me unless they are trying to make me look like an idiot. Now you might say, "Isn't that what the attending doctors do to med students?" Yes and no. They all do that to us sometimes but this was much worse than I was used to. My attending would pretty much ignore me even when we were sitting in the lounge just the 2 of us. He wouldn't talk to me. But as soon as a male med student walked in, it was like they were long lost buds. I guess I shouldn't take it personally. It's not my fault I was born without a penis.

Random thought: So have you ever taken medicine twice in a row because you forgot you took it the first time? I did that earlier. I walked in the bathroom took my pill. Then used the bathroom, washed my hands and then took another pill. In the 90 seconds or so that it took to use the bathroom and wash my hands I forgot that I had already taken the pill. Good thing it's nothing that'll hurt me, but isn't sad that my memory is so bad.

Powdered donuts

Well I admit I've been lazy lately (and boring). Everyday was pretty much the same for most of April and all of May. Get up, work out, study, complain about studying, and go to sleep. I took my board exam on June 1st and am a little fuzzy about what I did after that. Now I am enjoying my last week of vacation. My first week I celebrated my birthday by having my sister come visit and then later spending way too much money on a hair cut and pedicure. My as Loreal says, I'm worth it. Plus really, when you go to a salon it's all about the atmosphere and conversation with the stylist. My stylist is a little pricey but I'll pay it because I like her.

I went to Six Flags Great America for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I noticed some things. First, I'm a little old to be there. Most of the people there were kids and a few parents with kids. A lot of high school kids were there. I forgot what high school was like, possibly because I didn't have a normal high school experience. There were guys hanging all over scantily clad girls and my first thought was "I can't believe their mothers let them leave the house in that." They just annoyed me. Partially because they are annoying and partially because I may be a bit jealous that I never had that. Anyway, I also realized that half the fun of some of those rides is the fear that there is a slight chance that you'll die. I mean, that's what's so fun about the wooden coasters. No fancy loops or flips, but the clicking sound of the rails as the train inches up that first hill. Then that brief pause at the top of the hill. That is what gets you. The most exciting thing for me was that I didn't get a sun burn and the day wasn't ruined by a headache. I guess one plus to getting older, you have enough experience and common sense to bring and actually use sunscreen and bring painkillers.

Last week, I went up to the Wisconsin Dells with my mom. We had a good time. We saw a show, when on the boat tours, did some shopping. It was nice to get away, although if I was into water parks, it would have been like heaven. Seriously, there were water/amusement parks on every block. It was strange. I'm sure kids would love it, but I'm looking at it thinking, "Man, it must suck to bring your kids up here. I mean, they're going to be driving you crazy wanting to go to every freaking park." See, this is why I question my parenting skills. Well, that and my hatred of clowns. At one of the shows, I told my mom that we may have to leave it that clown started walking through the crowds talking to people. I really just don't like clowns. I'm not afraid of clowns like some I know. I think I don't like them because in general I just don't trust people that are happy all the time and that is kinda the thing with clowns. They are always happy, with those annoying smiles painted on their face. Plus, they have those balloon animals.

This weekend I went to see a college friend in Chicago. It's funny how with some people, no matter how long you go between visits and how much your lives change, when you see them it's easy to just pick up where you left off. And with others
you struggle to make conversation because you just don't have anything in common with them any more. I'm glad that I have friends in the former group. Actually it was during this visit that I got the title for this entry. As I was exchanging stories with my friend and her sister, we somehow got on the topic of, as K calls it, "a woman's womb" I was saying that I don't think most women know what a cervix looks like (and men too although they probably don't think about it much). So I was telling them that it kinda looks like those miniature, white, powdered donuts that your mom would never let you eat because they are so messy. Although it's pink and powderless. They said I should post more, but I said I have nothing interesting to say and people wouldn't be interested in the kinda things that I would post. So, if you are offended by the cervix discussion, blame them.

Funky

I've been in a funk lately. Nothing specifically that I want to talk about, it's just one of those things. So what did I do today, I watched When a Man Loves a Woman. Smart move, Janet, smart move. I was bawling my eyes out. Of course, now I do have some nice thoughts about Andy Garcia so I guess it wasn't all bad...

I think this is all connected to a stress-induced delirium I've been having today. I finished reading my pathology book this morning and realized that this weekend I had read an entire 500 page condensed textbook. 500 pages isn't that much really, but this was pretty dense since it was supposed to cover all of the high points in pathology. So basically, I should be an expert. That's actually pretty funny. I have been feeling a little crazy so I had this great idea to read some stuff on Scientology. Whoah boy, I don't feel so crazy anymore. If you want a good laugh, watch the South Park episode on Scientology. An "expert" on Scientology on CNN actually said that some of the details mentioned in the episode where pretty accurate. So basically what I got from my "research" was that 75 million years ago some alien king or something named Xenu killed a bunch of other aliens and sent their bodies down to Earth. Now there souls are stuck here and are the cause of all of our problems. Wow, this seems like a Sci-Fi story or something. Who would have ever thought this up? Oh, that's right, one of the "best" science fictions writers L. Ron Hubbard. I'm sure that I really over simplified this but it is fascinating. Actually, I find the whole thing fascinating. Not that I'm interesting in joining. Mostly it's the whole money thing. Or is it the slave labor? Or maybe it's the aliens?

[if anyone reading this is a Scientologist, I don't mean to be offensive. Actually if you'd like to correct any misrepresentations, that would be great.]

It's a good start

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I've been crazy busy. I'll be busy for a couple more weeks with exams but I'll try to keep you posting on what's going on. I did find this interesting. It's great that parts of our country are embracing universal health insurance. I don't necessarily think that the way they are going about it is ideal (like requiring people to buy health insurance) but it's a good start. Many compromises had to be made so that Democrats and Republicans could agree.

Subtle

Here are a few comments I heard today. "You look tired." "You look especially pale today." "Are you anxious about something?" And my personal favorite, "Did you just get back from the gym?" Okay, why doesn't everyone just say it. "You look like shit." So, yeah, it was a great day today. I spent the whole weekend in bed with a fever and my good friend nausea. So I guess I just looked as good as I felt. Really, I wanted to tell everyone that I look better today than I have in about 3 days, but I kept my mouth shut.

I didn't eat for a couple of days so I managed to lose a couple of pounds which is kind of annoying. I've been working my ass off going to the gym 4-5 times a week and watching what I eat. And now, I get sick and feel like crap for two days and lose more weight than I have in the last couple of weeks. Plus, now I know this week I'll lose nothing (and will likely gain) because that was just weight I lost from not eating. My only consolation is that my friend asked me if I had a bruise on my arm and I said no. Then she said, "Oh, that was just a shadow from your muscle."

No exciting news to post, although I may next Monday since I get to spend the weekend in Chicago with college friends to see Wicked. I am looking forward to it and am really glad this sickness came this weekend instead of next.

I guess I do have news. D-Day has been set (the day I take my board exam). June 1st is the day.