This thing I refer to as My Life

Sorry for repeating myself on that last post. The interface has been freaking out lately.

Have I mentioned how much I love South Park?! Yesterday's spoof on the morass of Mrs. Schiavo was really good.

Studying was s..l..o..w today. Hopefully it will pick here in a bit. Pretty good weekend of studying, but it's so hard to tell how one is doing because there is SO MUCH and 1 month to get it all reviewed/learned. (There seems to be a LOT that we did not learn, but that is known of UM. They do NOT teach to the exam.)

It got up to 58F today! All the snow is gone (it was gone yesterday), tomorrow will be nice like today, but then the rain will start and there's a chance of more snow on Thursday. Now I just need someone to turn off their car alarm! beep beep beep beep

I got my "girly" men's Dansko clogs today. I never say myself as a clog kind of guy, but it I'm going to spend the next year of my life on my feet I figured I've have to try something new because nothing I've got now keeps my dawgs happy after a few hours of standing let alone a whole day of it.

I don't WANT TO BE AN ADULT!...(How old am I?)

I cannot believe it's SNOWING! It was 50 yesterday. I guess that's spring in the Midwest.

Today was the day! Reproduction is done and that was the last exam of M2!!!! We celebrated with a bunch of friends by going to a Japanese Steak house. Since ML and I gave up eating stake back with the first US mad cow outbreak, we had chicken, shrimp and scallops. It was pretty good and a nice time. It was all a little sad because most of us will be going our separate ways after Step1, but we’ll still see each other on Fridays when the medical school holds a weekly lecture.

I cleaned up my office a bit and I will finish it tomorrow and start my studying for Step1. My exam is April 26th and will be here before I know it!

Another milestone passed in my life. Sort of like passing a kidney stone. (Really, I'm sure it's not that bad.) I attended my last day of classes of my M2 year today. Although we still have an exam on Monday, this marked the end of our lecture based learning. During the last class, we watched two movies: a c-section delivery and a vaginal delivery. YIKES! How do you women do that?! And, more importantly, WHY do you women do that?! All of that aside, YIKES! Sorry, I was not quite done yet. All of that aside, I'm looking forward to studying for the boards and starting M3. We'll see how I feel about that after I actually START studying for the boards! But, now I have to start cramming for my reproduction final. Oh joy! I'll be really glad when this exam is over. Or, maybe I should say, passed.

At the end of class today, your M2 advocates present the results of our mock elections. Yours truly was a runner up for class flirt (with the notation that I was married—I wanted to tell them, “exactly how did you think that happened?!”) and the dubious award of Class Dad! Well, one of three class Dad's. Do, I'm well on my way to my goal of Dirty Old Man! Now that would be a true accomplishment.

DSL came back up on Monday, but now I'm a little behind the eight ball with my classes. A friend of mine just asked me an interesting question...how much more time do I have in school. Then I realized, this may be noteworthy! I only have two more days of classes left in medical school! After this, I'll be taking my board exams on April 26 (so don't expect to hear much until then) and then I have one year and ten months on the wards (M3 and M4)! So I have really, almost, hit the half way mark! I suppose this exam I have on Monday is really the last "day" of conventional classes. But, I'm (we're) almost there!!! But, I don't want to get too excited, I still have a reproduction exam I have to pass.

This isn't so good. The DSL were we live went down at some point today. I had called to help line around 4:30p to listen to a recording that it was in fact down. At 5:30p the recording said all of the issues had been fixed. Well, not so much! My DSL is still dead and they don't reopen until Sunday. My neighbors' a few doors down works, but they left me in a lurch especially since I have about 5 hours of lectures to catch up on. I guess I'll be going in to school and giving the IT department a piece of my mind. (Probably not, but it feels nice to think I will.) I will ask for some money back this month! But I must say, going from a 4 Meg connection (really 2 Meg) down to 40 K dial-in makes a big difference!

Last night was the female pelvic exam. I sure do hope those ladies get paid a lot of money! (I know they do, but we have not been told how much.) The funniest part is since this person has been teaching this for the better part of 15 years, she knows whenever a doctor makes a mistake. I asked her if she ever corrects them...not usually. Some of the lighter comments included: "You just want to make sure the uterus is not the size of a Buick!" I almost asked which year she was referring to. And, just like a man knows when something is pushing on his testicles, a women will know when you have felt her ovaries. Words to live by!

I suppose that leaves no stone unturned by medical school. And I didn't even pass out once! Although the thought has crossed my mind, but that was mostly during Opthy. (How can any enjoy putting a knife into someone's eye? Yuck!)

Hooray! Hooray!!!! Hooray for MATH!
Well, I made the (poor) assumption that the lab questions from the endocrinology exam counted just as much as the questions from the written. Had that been the case, I would have missed honors by 0.02409639%. That would have been the slimmest margin that I missed honors (which has happened several times). As it turns out, the lab was worth just a fraction higher percentage so I GOT HONORS IN ENDOCRINE BABY! Now, when my dad goes to visit his brother (who is an endocrinologist) tomorrow, they can pat each other on the back and talk about how our gene pool is just good a making lawyers and endocrinologists!

Endocrine is done...only ONE more sequence left in M2. Reproduction! If it's anything like last year, we'll spend a half a day on men and the rest of the two weeks on women. Not that I have a big problem with that, but it always seems that professors take a little too much pride in seeing how quickly they can cover the male aspects. I'd mind less if they would actually incorporate some "useful" tips but that would be asking too much I suppose. ;)

At least I get to exercise today! If I can get away from the e-mail piled up.

"They" say that dissecting a human cadaver is part of the right-of-passage of medical school. Well, I'll tell you this: It sure was an experience I'll never forget but what I did today, sticking my finger up a guy's butt, will be a longer lasting memory. As of today, you can just call me Ass Man! (From Seinfeld in case you don't remember.)

I cannot tell you how strong the compulsion is to wash your hands after said experience. Yes, I had gloves on, but still! I think I've washed my hands over a dozen times now. They still feel dirty! ;-)

I had commented with my fellow students how I was more anxious about this exam than I am about the up-coming pelvic exam, but I was not sure why. Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that I have actually never "dealt" with someone else's nut-sack (three piece suit) and butt hole. I have, however, had at least SOME experience with other womens'...well...you know.

In hind-site (HA HA!), the testicular portion of the exam was pretty rough too and more technically challenging. I'm still doubled over in pain. I'm not sure which one was worse and I wish I could say that it's over, but since I am doing my medicine rotation first I fear the worst is yet to come. Something about digitally disimpacting a bowel?

On the lighter side, I (mostly) rebuilt the software on my main computer yesterday and it's been running just great ever since. (I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.) Oddly, I expected the computer to be a little faster since it is now more lean. (Only the most critical software has been installed and it has not gone through years of installing and uninstalling like it had before.) But, it seem about the same. That really says a lot for WinXP. That is so long as you don't consider that the System Restore from the installation CD ZAPPED the whole thing.

Oops!

I was trying out a new webcam on my computer a few weeks ago and right after installing the software, the computer started to lock up about twice a day--even after un-installing the software. I switched over to windows 98 (dual boot) and that ran fine so I was pretty sure it was the software on the windows XP and not the computer. But, I did try to make sure all of my hardware was connected securely since I had been moving things around a lot.

The other thing the computer would do was space out (not really freeze because the mouse would work, but if you were typing, it would not show up on the screen) then both monitors would cut out for about a second and turn back on and everything would run fine for a while. Today, it started doing that with greater frequency! I had already virus checked it within an inch of its life as well as spyware checking, but nothing was helping. I had mistakenly disabled the windows restore function--there's a good lesson! Don't turn off the windows restore if you have enough hard drive space for it. So I decided to try the windows repair function on the original XP CD. I knew it was a little bit of a long shot, but I had to do something.

ZAP! The computer stopped booting into XP. So, now I'm frantically rebuilding because I have homework to do and classes to deal with. Fortunately for me, ML's computer still works like a champ and is my backup.

Just remember, XP system restore is a GOOD thing. (And it is normally ON, so if you don't know what I'm talking about and you're using XP, then it's working for you.)