Tonight's Adventure

We decided we wanted sushi for dinner tonight, and since it's the weekend and we had a little more time, we'd walk a few blocks up to a real sushi place instead of just buying it at Whole Foods. We've been liking Shinju recently, but each time we tried to get take out, they would be packed and we'd have to wait 40 minutes outside for our food. So this time we were smart and decided to call our order in. We had neither their phone number nor their menu, but that's what the internet is for. So we quickly found them on MenuPages, menu and all! However, the page noted in all caps that Shinju is CLOSED. We checked their hours and they were supposed to still be open, so we called. Got a busy signal twice and I was starting to wonder if the line was disconnected when someone finally picked up. It was super noisy in the background and I couldn't hear what the girl said so I was still a little nervous that maybe this was no longer Shinju's number, so I hesitantly asked for my sushi order. No problem, rainbow roll with brown rice, definitely! Sushi success! 30 minute wait, just like I expected, so we hung out and then headed over.

It's a short walk straight up 9th st, and it wasn't too cold out. There were salt trucks out prepping the roads for the light rain we're supposed to get tomorrow -- excellent use of resources. We turn the corner onto Locust, walk the half block... and find a dark, boarded up Shinju. The interwebs were right, Shinju is CLOSED. Yet, hadn't I just called their number and ordered sushi from them? Maybe their had been a terrible tragedy, and now ghost of the former sushi chef was taking phantom orders when there is a half moon in the night sky. Or WORSE, maybe they had moved across town and our sushi order was waiting for us in Rittenhouse, farther than our cold hungry legs could take us.

::And now for the exciting conclusion to tonight's adventure!!!::

So after laughing for ourselves for a minute, I called back the number I had used to place the order and nonchalantly asked for their address. I held my breath... three blocks away! Score! Our night was saved.

In case you're curious, Shinju moved to a trendier location at 719 Walnut AND changed their named to Fat Salmon. Still good though, and we got twice the sashimi pieces we ordered for no extra charge! Worth the confusion.

THE END

Happy New Year

Supposedly this is my 400th post. (that might include drafts)

After a several month hiatus, I thought I'd pop in and drop an entry into the blogosphere. It has been a very busy winter, with non-stop traveling for interviewing and socializing. I can't complain about the socializing, but nonetheless I am excited that we have ZERO plans this upcoming weekend. We have so much free time -- maybe we will even take down the Christmas tree!

I do have a job this weekend though. I have to actually, finally, formally finish my Match List. And any time I reenter my list, Glen also has to reenter his list because of the lovely couple's match system. I haven't felt this stressed out in months. Can't someone just make it for me?

On top of that, the winter is really getting to me. We have gotten an all-time record amount of snow in Philly, mostly from two multi-foot storms we got back-to-back last week; the piles are still thigh-high. The roads are narrowed, missing lanes. Parking is atrocious. And, we're supposed to get more next week. Luckily, I only have one more week of driving in it, and I think my frustration level will go way down when I can go back to just myself sliding on the ice as I *walk* to work, instead of me and my several ton vehicle sliding as I drive.

One thing I wanted to brag about quickly -- I just cleaned out my inbox!!! Emails had been backing up since September 2008 when I started my surgery rotation. I reached a height of 750+ unread emails in my inbox, with thousands of total emails. I did some work on it a few months ago, and I've been hovering just below 200 unread emails and 1000 total emails, which I had come to think was pretty good. But tonight with nothing better to do and some nervous pre-Match energy, I have conquered the box and left myself with ZERO unread and just a couple dozen that need some sort of action. Now that I have this sweet feeling of accomplishment, I can head to sleep, hopefully to return to the blog sometime within a shorter time period than the last hiatus.

Happy 2010!!! An exciting year to come.

lose yourself

Oh! HERE'S my blog! I lost it for a while.

Things are rolling right along around here. I have a feeling that fourth year is going to go by very fast.

Today we signed up to have our senior photos (in graduation garb) taken... so that's basically the beginning of the end. The fun has begun though, with using interviews and board exams as excuse to crash with friends for weekends at a time. I'm going to try to enjoy this while it lasts :-)

Bring on the parties!

!

whose idea was it to take an 8 hour exam two days after a 9 hour exam?? well????

looking forward to being DONE tomorrow.

Redux

This time around, I hiccuped three or four times.
http://redheadmed.blogspot.com/2007/06/i-only-hiccupped-once.html

Let's go!

I have Step 2 (of 3) of the United States Medical Licensing Exam tomorrow. Nine hours of marathon testing fun.

When I took Step 1, it was this horrible annoying test that served as one final exam for the two hardest years of my educational life. It felt like a hoop I had to jump through. And I took it knowing there were two more parts after it!

This feels a little different. Step 2 is testing me on knowledge that I've already put to use on my clinical rotations, that I know the value of. Sure they love to test the rare stuff, but rare stuff does occasionally happen -- just in the past few months I've had a patient with neurofibromatosis and a patient with osteogenesis imperfecta. With Step 2, I don't find myself muttering that "I'm never going to need to know this."

And, now there's only one more of these tests in the sequence. And when I take that test, it lets me become a licensed physician -- that goal is actually in sight. So this feels less like a hoop and more like a step towards a goal.

...a nine hour, endurance marathon sort of step.

Oh yeah, and in between those two moments, this one.
(look for the rainbow)

after the storm.

storm.

A is for Alyson… really.

So… back when I was studying for Step 1, I had all sorts of crazy stress reactions, and even got a touch of dermatographia – I would break out in a stripe of hives whenever I got scratched or bumped.

I mentioned this to a family medicine attending who likes skin findings and really likes to take pictures of them for an online database that he uses to teach residents and students.  He told me that if I ever had it again, I should get him a picture.

This was fresh in my mind because I just finished a month-long course with another doctor who takes photos of any interesting physical finding he comes across… after 20 years of practice, he has a photo of everything.

So tonight, as I mentioned earlier, I was feeling kind of stressed out, and I started breaking out in hives.  This happens regularly, but it’s usually just a single  hive, maybe two.  But tonight I got four across my upper chest and shoulders.  I thought, oh!  Maybe my dermatographia is back!  I’ll scratch myself and take a photo. 

Dermatographia means skin writing, as classically one could use a pencil and write on the skin and it would appear as letters of red welts.  So I figured I would also use a letter for demonstration.  I figured A is the first letter, kind of the typical letter to use, and plus it’s my initial.  So I scratched myself in the shape of an A just below my collarbone and waited.

No hives.

…which, I just realized, is for the best, because I literally just attempted to emblazon my chest with a scarlet letter.

(there’s only faint scratch marks which I trust will be gone by morning… more of a pink letter.)

actually, it's me and a mountain the day before we got engaged.

:-)

Me and a mountain.

Today we went down to duPont Children's Hospital for computer training for our emergency medicine rotation. We also picked our schedule -- eight shifts for the month. I "back-loaded" my schedule, meaning I'm working five days in a row the last week. But this also means I have one shift per week for the first three weeks. Yeah, the fact that 'working five days in a row' is this ghastly fact is awesome. I did this so I could continue to study for step 2 over the next week... and then chill out for a week straight ;-) We're going to clean out the back room! Really! Seriously this time! I had come to accept that we don't have an "office" we have a "storage room" so I lost my motivation but we are going to reclaim this room by the end of October!

Then this evening I went to the wine and cheese internal medicine reception where all the fourth years interested in IM came and socialized with the big wigs of the Jeff residency program. I always walk away feeling like I couldn't have been more awkward, but I'm glad I went rather than not. At least they will remember my awkward face.

So, not much room left in today for studying. My studying has also been stifled over the past two days by some weird transient symptoms... gnawing headache, nausea, GI upset, malaise, lightheadedness. I feel sick, but it won't come on all the way. I could also attribute it not sleeping well... but when you put all that together, it really just sounds like stress, doesn't it? I can't wait for this test to be over.

This is my photo from Friday. It's a picture of our pet watermelon.

We've had it since... the first week of June I think. That was back when Glen and I were gung-ho about cleaning up the backyard and turning it into a usable space. We cut the grass, bought potted plants to hide the fact that it kind of looks like a construction zone back there, and even made a little temporary patio for our grill. We ate back there a bunch of times. And in the midst of that, Glen bought this watermelon, the perfect barbeque food!

Then, it started to rain. And it rained and rained and rained, and we didn't eat outside. Then it cleared up long enough to go on our camping trip... and we said hey! Let's bring our watermelon on our camping trip -- that will be perfect. And we forgot our watermelon at home.

Then when we came home, I'm told that it continued to rain for most of July, although I have to admit that most of the month is a blur. I do remember one walk to work where even with an umbrella I was completely soaked to above my knees by the time I walked the 5 blocks to the hospital, and it took the majority of the day for my leather shoes to dry out. (It wasn't even raining when I left the house, which is why I wore little leather dress shoes instead of my pink rainboots. Although, in that rain, my boots probably would have been full of water.)

Then August came and it was muggy. And I was on my sub-I rotation. And Glen was studying for the boards. And then when he finished, I started studying for my boards. So sadly, there haven't been many more barbeques.

And, our watermelon is still here.

It feels fine, still solid, doesn't smell bad. Somehow though I have a feeling that we're brewing watermelon liquor in there. Which could turn out to be awesome.

Or not. I'll let you know.

Hey! I just saw that the whole rest of my post got cut off! It went as follows:

It was the very deep photo of a man in short shorts with his stoagie that caught my eye, but if you'll notice to the right there is also a black fedora and beneath that a whole printer in a cardboard box.

I finished my Advanced Physical Diagnosis class today! I'm kinda sad it's over and I wish I could take it a second time and maybe soak up a little bit more of the tidal wave of information that came at me.

To celebrate, tonight Glen and I went out to the biannual movie shown out on the quad. It was "Up" which had recently been recommended to me... Man I don't think I've ever cried so much in the first five minutes of a film, let alone a cartoon!  It was vey sweet though.

Early to bed for me and back to studying tomorrow.

Of films and fedoras

This isn't my neighbor's, but I did pass this interesting pile of
trash on my way to class this morning.

(detail)

Same trip, following evening.

I'm supposed to be studying for Step 2, but I lost my motivation a few days ago.

Eight weeks until six weeks of vacation!

So my attempts at writing on here more often haven't been successful. The patient idea was good but A) I'm not currently seeing patients and B) that is really time intensive, and I haven't been able to give that much lately. The idea about documenting my neighbor's funny garbage would have been fun, but of course they stopped putting out funny garbage! (last week there was a single running shoe from the 1970s that looked like it had been keep in some sort of vacuum sealed time capsule, but it's not the first time they've thrown out odd retro running shoes, so I wasn't impressed.)

Now I'm thinking maybe I'll just try to post a picture every day of so, since I do get joy out of flipping through Picasa and playing with my photos. This is one of my favorites from our road trip through scenic western Virginia and North Carolina on our way down to Florida in August 2006. I think it came out pretty well considering it was taken out the window of a moving vehicle. I just got it printed to hang in a frame in our apartment.

study break

I’m currently studying for Step 2 of my licensing exam, so I feel like I have no time to blog.  It’s kind of interesting though, that this blog started while I was studying for Step 1.  The difference is that back then, June 2007, I had five weeks off to completely devote to studying – not only does that mean more study time but it also meant that I felt like I was going to go crazy if I didn’t pick up a side activity, but one that I could do without leaving my desk.  Now, I’m in a classroom-based rotation during the day.  Granted, it’s one of the lighter ways you could spend a rotation: I go and listen to someone talk from 9a to 3p every day.  But, nonetheless, the number of hours I can spend studying is greatly reduced.  So when I’m home I feel like I have to be productive.

I’ve been writing this entry all day – a sentence before returning to work or going out to do an errand.  I’m going to just say it’s done, so that when I take my other breaks I do some other non-work things I have lined up.  This includes getting some pictures printed at snapfish.com – they had free printing through tomorrow :-)

you spin me right round

So last year I remember all my med school friends being miserable around this time of year… and now I understand why.  This application is just… kind of mind boggling.  Thank goodness it’s nothing like the application to med school where you sent off the common app to your programs (thirty of them if you were me) and then they each in turn sent you back their own ‘secondary application’ which (a) asked you to write up to five new essays just for that school and (b) asked you to send them $100.

This time around it’s just this one common app.  But sorting through all the programs, selecting the right ones, clicking through all of the choice boxes for each of my (22) programs.  It just makes your brain spin.  Trying to decide with little to no information if I want to apply to program X.   Having to triple check everything you type in because you’ve been led to believe that a single typo will make you lose your spot at your favorite program.

The application formally opens tonight at midnight, but mine’s not going to be submitted.  I just can’t finish it tonight.

Looking forward for the interview season part of this adventure to begin.  Friends, get your couches ready.