This thing I refer to as My Life

We’re having a heat wave! A tropical heat wave!
Won’t it be musing?
To watch us go boozing
And see if a can can can?

(Line from MASH, but is it awfully nice outside today!) 51 F! We’re going out to enjoy it. Maybe Mary Lee will even let me put the top down. Maybe.

Last night we discovered how to play two player Doom with our computers networked together. That kept us up until 2a. Oops! Funny thing is it's like a 10 year old game. We just never tryed to play two players before.

I updated my wireless router the other day thinking it would be a good move! Afterwards, we could no longer transfer files between mine and Mary Lee’s computers. I would start to transfer one file, choke and then drop the wireless connection all together. So, I tried updating the firmware again and the router started spontaneously rebooting itself! It must have had the same problem as Spirit. Finally, I was able to reload the original firmware and all is working again. I actually learned a good trick. Normally, if the firmware is corrupt, you are screwed. But D-Link was smart enough to have firmware for the firmware. If you hold down the reset button for about 20 seconds, it automatically asks to download a new firmware version. For you non-computer geeks that read this, that is important because if they firmware becomes corrupt you have to replace the memory chip that holds the information, which can be expensive if even possible.

I spent the other part of the day hanging diplomas and office-type things on the office walls and installing our transparent (ducky-filled) toilet seat on our toilet. It’s pretty neat, but it is strange to be able to see the toilet flush when the lid is closed. Normally, that would be picture worthy, but the batteries for the camera need to be charge.

We were planning on a day trip to Canada tomorrow but the 11.5 total hours of driving were enough to dissuade us. It just won’t work as a day trip and we really have too much other stuff to do this weekend to make it longer. We were going to visit my old friend Logan who live in Toronto with his wife Kelly, but he is coming to A^2 in two weeks to interview a postdoc—Logan is a professor at York and the person he is interviewing is here at UM but is from the Ukraine and cannot travel to Canada easily. So, we’ll get to see Log soon.

So, now my dad is guilt’ing me into posting. Well, that’s okay. Most of my time has been spent doing something that had just gotten way too out of hand. I ran out of hard drive space! Actually, I ran out late last semester and I have been hanging on with a few hundred meg. I’ve dumped a BUNCH of old images to CD but I think the biggest gain was made erasing some of Mary Lee’s files. You see, I did a “mitzvoth” for her family over the last, well, several years. Her dad, who passed away quite some time ago, had these reel-to-reel tapes mostly of Christmas music. The sisters would joke about him playing the music starting in last July until late January and they never heard the same song twice. (That last bit I through in, but you’ll see why.) Mary Lee’s mom (Mary) was about to through the reel-to-reel player away since it had broken several years before. I asked if we could take and because I wanted to see if I could fix it and then turn all of the tapes into CD’s for the family. This all started back in December of 2001. It was not until early 2002 that I finally had the opportunity to open it up and see what was wrong. It turned out that the main belt had liquefied. It was really nasty! I cleaned it up and spent the next three months trying to find a new belt. Ultimately, I found a guy on e-bay that sells them. I don’t know why I didn’t look there first?! Actually, I tried Radio Shack first since it is a Realistic. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.

Once I get everything back together, which was like a year later, I copied over the first tape. It was in pretty good condition considering all that the player and the tape had been through. In total, I transformed over 20 hours of music from tape to CD. Only one tape self-destructed during playback, so it was lost. Two of them had a fold in the middle so all of the sudden they would get faint and be playing backwards. That was a little odd the first time that happened. Since I’m not a big fan of Christmas music, it took the better part of the summer to accomplish the task. Over the holidays, I gave each of the sisters (with the exception of Susan because she did join us)two full CD’s with mp3’s of all of the music. Truly a labor of Love.

But, to come full circle, I still had several of the original (uncompressed) files of the tapes (it’s about 1.5 Gig per side of each tape) and then all of the compressed versions.

I’m still finding large files here and there and I’ve managed to get back almost half of the drive (14 gig right now).

What else have I been doing on my break? I’ve been trying to clean my office. I’m dealing with my state taxes. I have to redo my federal taxes because the first 1099-D’s were wrong. And I set up an all-in-one cheap’o home theater. What I have not done a lot of is exercise. I did work out yesterday, but I missed Monday. I’m hoping that I’ll get to clock some hours at it today. Speaking of which, I should stop this and get to it!

Hooray! I just finished my endocrine/nutrition exam and I must say that this was probably my best block thus far with respect to testing performance. Maybe in part because it’s pretty straightforward material, but my performance with respect to the class average has also improved. This should make my uncle David happy, since he’s an endocrinologist!

I have been tweaking my study habits a bit and I hope that is playing a part. I think it’ll be more apparent with our next block which is reproduction. It tends to be a very detailed subject and I’m sure the medical school version will be no different. ML is doing some work while I’m sitting here at her computer. Then it’s a fun filled evening of shopping and sleeping.

We’re on spring break as of tomorrow so I will be filling my days with rest, unpacking the last few remaining boxes, hanging the last few pictures, washing all of the salt off of the car and stuff like that. It could not have come at a better time. I really could use the break.

As with many exam/quiz weekends, I am often too busy to shave my face. Whereas I would think Mary Lee would appreciate the exfoliation potential this affords, she tends to be apprehensive towards amorist states for fear of facial irritation induced by the hyper-abrasive state of the aforementioned facial stubble. Necessity being the Mother of invention, I swiftly fashioned the Face Condom in hopes to quell her trepidations.

Sometimes Zen is a good thing. My anatomy professor always tells us to go with our first instinct when we are taking the practical. I learned one the first practical that it was very true. I had missed one question which I had changed from the right answer to the wrong one after questioning myself. So what does this have to do with Zen? Well, I think of it when I go to take one of these exams and I purposefully don’t question myself. I write down the first answer that comes to mind. In all honesty, I did not completely Zen this exam. But there was one histology question that was really interesting. I looked at the tissue and my initial instinct was to mark thyroid. But then something stopped me and I realized it was parathyroid tissue. And as I was correcting the bubble-sheet, I realized why I knew it had to be a parathyroid. Now some of you (like my father) would (will) ask, how on Earth could you tell the difference between the two just by looking through a microscope? Well, if you had ever seen them, they look nothing alike. Thyroid has little pools (follicles) of colloid made of thyroglobulin and calcitonin producing cell. Parathyroid is full of little chef cells that my parathyroid hormone and they ultra cool cells called oxyphils that are CHUCK full of mitochondria (unlike any other cell in the body—that I’ve seen) that no one knows what they do. Moreover, the parathyroid looks like anterior pituitary where the AP basophilic cells look a bit like the PIT chief cells and the AP acidophilic cells look like the oxyphil. Really, the only difference is how dark the oxyphil nuclei stain and that the basophils are a little bluer—all depending on the stain. Zen did not work 100%, but I made a good showing. But I did fail to notice if one of the cadavers was male or female and so I missed the gonadal vein question. (Actually, I really thought I did check and answered accordingly, but I got it wrong. But, it’s possible the answer key was wrong. That happens too.)

Anyway, time to start dinner for my darling wife who has to work late and then study study study!

Can someone please tell me how on Earth it can be foggy and only 19F? Doesn't that mean you're walking into a solid lattice? Well, that's what it was like this morning. The one saving grace was that when Mary Lee went outside, ice crystals were forming on her jacket. No, not falling on her jacket, FORMING on her jacket.

I'm hip deep in neck, abdomen, endocrine, and nutrition. What fun! We did get to remove the bowel today, but it did not greatly improve the smell as I had hoped. :-)

Oh, and I did exercise today. I think I'll just start posting when I don't do it. That way I don't have to hear it from my pop when I forget to post that I did. :-P

I should add that they did inflict a new, special, hell on us, but only for a day. We had to count our calories for a day. 1785, choke on that!

I was a very bad boy today. I did not exercise. Instead, I took a tour of the Radiology department here with the Radiology interest group. Well, that was not until 6:30p, but I was in lab until 5p and I just plainly did not get up early enough this morning. The tour was pretty interesting. As I expected, they have much of the same instruments that the UTMB department had, maybe a bit larger in number of duplicates. It also seemed to be a bit more diffuse space wise. The reading rooms were very scattered, whereas UTMB has them closer together. But, that may have also been an artifact of the path we walked in the tour. I'm still not committing myself to any one field, before you ask. Hopefully, I'll know more toward the end of this summer.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. But not for the reason one would think. As usual, we had a test this weekend, but this was our first approximation at a genuine quiz—fewer questions, but same difficultly as the exams. Anyway, I was able to take the quiz yesterday evening. I had hoped to take it in the AM, but there was a little too much material to carve through. In part because last week was pretty light with respect to total class hours and to try to cut back on the quiz difficulty, we only had 22 questions on this quiz. It was good because it went quickly, but it was bad in that there was a smaller margin for error. And, as it turned out, there was quite a lot of material to mezmorize for this week. I did not realize how dense it the week was until I started really studying it. Anyway, the quiz went really well so we had the whole evening together and today without me having to scramble for extra study time.

What made yesterday even better is that we finally found a good sushi restaurant (Yotsuba) near us! They are extremely busy and don’t really take walk-ins on the weekends. But we were invited to wait and see if anyone missed their reservation. We sat around for about 20 minutes and lucked out. It did take long time to get our food, but they were extremely busy. In any case, the sushi was pretty good and not as expensive as the other sushi restaurants that we’ve been to around here.

Hey! Pinky is still alive! I can hear him scratching away. Yippy!

I guess I should add that I did work out yesterday, but I did it at 8p when I started to get tired of studying. I have not done it yet today, but I will. Oh! And I have a friend in the wall! How could I forget to tell you about this? I was outlining my notes the other night and I heard some noise that sounded like someone writing on paper, except I had stop writing on the paper. I took out my trusty stethoscope and promptly placed it against the wall. Using my excellent (and newfound) medical touch, I discovered that there is a mouse in the wall! At least it sounds like a mouse. The scratching is too small to be a rat. I heard him yesterday too, but he was getting a little slower. I don’t hear him today so I fear the worst. Soon, my office will be full of dead-mouse-stank. Oh well. Aren’t you glad I shared that with you?

You just got to love days like today. The alarm went off at 7a and I nudged Mary Lee out of bed. I was originally going to get up with her but I was still pretty sleepy. I asked to wake me when she got out of the shower which is usually around 8a. Which she did and then I decided that I would sleep a little longer so I set the alarm for 9a. After all, I did not have class until 11a this morning! SWEET! (And I did say up pretty late last night studying.)

I had a conference call with my collaborators at NASA/UTMB. They are working on analyzing the MRI data we collected (and that they continued to collect after I had left). That looks like it will be a nice publication over the summer, I hope. They have offered to fly me down over the summer if/when they need some more help. (Sounds like a mixed blessing, I should have them fly me down when it is still frozen up here and pleasant down there. Summer in Galvetraz is brutal! The rumor is the fellow they were trying to attract to take my position at UTMB has declined the position, so my job is still totally available to me when I decide this medical school gig is for the birds. :)

More importantly than all of that, I need to think of something nice to do for Valentine’s Day. That is other than taking my test early this weekend so we can spend time together. Maybe that’s enough, but she diserves more.

Since you asked (well, some of you) we are studying endocrinology this week and next. We’re also studying the anatomy of the neck.

In class, we have had several discussions about the Atkins diet and this is what I have as a take home: One professor thinks it is pretty good, the other thinks it is terrible and neither can produce one little shred of scientific evidence to justify their opinion. In all fairness the professor that is pro Atkins does admit that there are no studies that do a complete examination of the effects of the diet. The one interesting point he makes is that even though people tend to gain weight back when they go off of the diet, they still eat less overall. I don’t know how valid that observation is, but it is interesting. Also, the professor that is for Atkins is a heavy-set male and the professor that is against it is a wafer-thin female. Go figure!

My sister and her son Sam seem to be swell. Otherwise, it was a Monday. We started endocrinology today. I worked out this morning. This is a recording.

There are some new pictures up for you to enjoy. First, the Coat Parade! There is actually one missing, I don’t know how it did not get taken because I thought the camera took it, but I’m wrong. You’ll get the idea anyway. A coat for every temperature: each one has its own special usefulness. Next, up is the Static Show. There’s a little movie as the end which is not that good, but it’s my first. Mary Lee’s little digital camera will take little movies and that’s how I made it. Next up is some shots of playing in the snow. Take a look at our neighborhood igloo! Finally, there are a couple of bad pictures of frozen bubbles. I promise to take better ones, but the temperature really needs to go down to -5F and I just don’t think it is going to happen this year. I’m surprised how much “warmer” it is here than Indiana, but they say it’s due to the lakes, which makes sense.

Yeah! My sister, Michelle, (and to a lesser extent Vic, my brother-in-law) gave birth to her second son this morning at 1a. My mom called to tell me around 2a. YEAH!!! I'm an uncle...again.

To celebrate, ML and I went sledding this afternoon at the golf course down the street for about 1.5 hr. That was my workout for the day. Now I know why they say our children need to do more sledding and spend less time in front of the computer. I'll have a couple of picture in just a moment AND may the parade of jackets, too. The first set I took did not come out at all.

I had a relatively short school day. Had the Classics from 9:30a till 11a and then from 1p till 2:30p. I finally know what a heart mummer sounds like as well as what clubbing on the fingers looks like.

I came home and worked out on my Nordic Track and then the Bow Flex while watching the Shawshank Redemption (one of my favorite movies). Yes, the basement has turned into a mini gym. Since, I’ve been dealing with e-mails and such. Did I mention that day before yesterday we hit 40F? But only 16F yesterday, so winter isn’t over yet. Actually, it was bad because the snow started melting and there was standing water all over the sidewalks, which promptly froze the night into slippery ice. We’re supposed to get snow tonight and tomorrow, but only a couple of inches of accumulation. No big deal, anymore.

First, I should start out by stating that I’m bad boy. I did not lift yesterday. When I went to nap, it turned out into more of a sleep than a nap. Usually, my naps are about 15 minutes long but this lasted closer to an hour. After Mary Lee came home, I surprised her by giving her choice of dinner out or me cooking and cleaning. We had some left over errands to run from the weekend, so she decided that we should eat out and do the shopping--maybe she just did not feel like having my cooking. We went to Siam Square, which is a Thai restaurant in town. It’s pretty good, not great, but good. It was a nice surprise!

Today we did the abdominal exam and then had a class on history taking for chest pain patients. Tomorrow is supposed to be really good with lots of classical findings. It is a dress up day, but we were instructed not to wear our white coats. It tends to get hot in the examination rooms and people have been passing out. So tomorrow is just a shirts, slacks and tie day. Good thing for me it’s only for two hours.

Today, to make up for not working out, I did an hour workout instead of 20 minutes. (Three sets instead of one.) I did upper body today and I’ll do three sets of lower body tomorrow. If I’m crazy enough, I may actually do some aerobic exercise!

Spring has Sprung and Ah! The spoils of clinical week! The days start a little earlier and can go into the afternoon, but once you’re done, you’re done. Actually, the class load is not all that great and may people have been starting later in the day. Today and yesterday I started at 8a but both days I had a long break in the middle of the day. Today, I was able to do all of my readings during my break so now I’m free for the rest of the day. I think there will be a pleasant little nap followed by some upper body building. Then, a lovely evening with my lovely and I may even do the dishes! Or take her out. I’m such a nice guy!

Let me tell you about clinical week: we learn how to perform physical examinations and practice them on each other. Yesterday I learned how to perform a cardiac examination, which I think I mentioned already. That includes what to listen for and where to look and listen for things like mummers and thrills. Also, how to position the patient to best hear all of the things we’re supposed to hear. Of course we’re all pretty healthy so it’s difficult to tell what abnormal sounds like. Today, we learned the pulmonary exam and how to listen and where to thump on the back and tell if the lungs are clear and where the lower borders are (the diaphragm). Tomorrow, we will learn the abdominal exam. This is mostly a palpating event with some listening to the bowels. If you’ve never listed to bowel sounds, you really must. They can be really strange and funny. If you have a stethoscope, you can listen to your self, but it also works if you just put your ear up to best friend’s (AKA spousal-unit’s) tummy. At times, it will even sound like the gentle waves of midnight lake water lapping against the wooden hull of a 27 foot Owen’s cabin cruiser. I am very curious to see if we’re going to do a kidney capture. This is where you have a person inhale to push the kidneys down, and then you push from above and below and as the person exhales you can feel the kidney slip between your hands. Personally, I think it is a terrible way to exam a kidney. I would rather just order a darn MRI or ultrasound, but that is probably just my inner radiologist coming through.

Classes on Thursday and Friday are called Classic Physical Findings. The school recruits several patients with classical abnormal findings and has them in an examination room. In groups of 5 we go into the room, the physician explains the case (I suspect we will get to listen) and then we move on in about 8 minutes. We have done this once already with a handful of different Rheumatoid Arthritis patients and it works quite well. Although, that may have been easier since we were just introduced and visually inspected the joint(s) that were affected. Then, an open book exam on Friday afternoon and finally, it’s TAX TIME! Yeah! It may be a little tricky this year between the moving expenses, school credit (if I get to take it) and the part year resident on a joint filing. I wonder if it will be better to file separately? I’ll have to look into that.

Oh! I almost forgot about Woody and Groundhog’s Day. Turns out that Michigan and all of those Michiganders have decided that Punxsutawney Phil just doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. He has been right only 48% of the time. Woody’s prediction has been much more accurate with 4 out of the last 5 years. Yesterday he said there would be an early spring and today, we got it! It’s a blistering 40F outside today! It was 35 this morning. Unfortunately, it’s a cold 40F because there is a good breeze and it is mighty humid out there. But, it’s still better than -40F. Spring time, when a boys mind turns towards…napping!

What a weird day, today is!

I took the written final exam yesterday around 12:30p or so. It took a long time to take and was actually quit freaking difficult. It was not fun! You know, I want my money back. Medical school was supposed to be fun ALL the time! Someone lied to me! We went shopping and then ended up back home and managed to watch the s(t)uper bowl from the middle of the second quarter on. Most of you know how I feel about watching sports, but we were a little sucked in while we were doing other things. We actually did NOT watch the half time so we did not get to see Janet in the buff. I think you can go the Druge Report and look at the photos of all the action. That not withstanding, it was a moderate good game and yes that is the nicest thing I have ever said about any watching football game. But, that is not what made today weird.

We went to sleep around 12:30a for a peaceful night’s rest which was great, until 4:30a. I just could not sleep any longer! I decided to get up and do some e-mailing and I expected to go back to sleep, but I did not. I went and lifted weights around 5:30a and got myself to school for my 8a class. All was okay until about 9a. I was doing some reading in the library and I started to crash, hard!

I came home around 3:30p after an afternoon of learning how to perform a cardiac examination, took care of some business and I just woke from a nap. Now I’m a little groggy, but I have to go back to school to do some more reading for tomorrow.

Well, I guess that was not that interesting, but there it is.