I dream of fall. I dream of cool, crisp mornings that turn into still-cool afternoons. I dream of long-sleeved shirts and jeans and cozy sweatshirts. Of red, gold, purple leaves decorating the trees. Of the smoky smell of cold air in the evenings keeping me cool.

But I wake up and find myself in this god-forsaken state. With humid mornings and sweltering days and always necessary air conditioning. I see dry, parched grass and feel the same way. This long, lingering summer feeling abnormal. It may stretch half into November.

Half of my yearning for Iowa and disdain for this state is due to weather.

when I wear my white coat. Or so says the internal medicine doc who facilitated by history oral presentation today. It was actually way more chill than I anticipated and way more interesting. We talked about the cases instead of being ripped a new one by the attendings. Also we didn't get to all the cases, so I didn't have to / get to present. The facilitator though totally talked like a Dag guy. Or maybe I just think that because he talked exactly like someone I know but can't quite remember ... oh wait, maybe Benjie. The similarity was odd.

This morning though was pretty crappy what with Harry having a flat tire. Sigh. Another thing to take care of. I don't think I can get a new one though until Thursday since I have opthalmology clinic tomorrow.

This afternoon I also had my first MS1 curriculum committee meeting. I ate two cheese sticks and dried out my mouth and (I think) gave myself a headache. Other than that it was mildly interesting. Dr. Tansey sat next to me and was playing solitaire while someone was talking about how the MS2 courses do evaluations, and I had to fight not to laugh. The bio chem profs were all stats happy. Apparently the scantron machine has broken, and been broken for a week, and they had to grade ~ 1/3 of the biochem exams by hand.

Today's the first day that it hasn't even been hot. Fall is coming. How strange and fantastic. Soon it'll be pleasant enough to come home after class and curl up on the balcony with notecards and memorize them here. I still feel a little sad that I'm not going back to Grinnell - to study on the loggia and in Noyce and Burling. But Noyce is all new this year, and my little firsties are junior now. It's hardly the Grinnell I remember anymore. Hanghang has started med school, and I keep in touch with her via plans and the occasional phone call. She seems to be having a rough time with the transition between liberal arts and med school - ruminating and memorizing. I think that things will get easier for her, but she reminds me so much of me this time last year. It makes me glad that I don't have go through that again. Even though this year is harder, it feels less sad and hopeless. Even when I feel completely overwhelmed by the drugs I have to learn, the feeling doesn't last long. I just take a deep breath and focus on the now, knowing that what I'll need to do tomorrow, I'll do tomorrow.

Friday I saw Stardust with some people, and it was really excellent. I love Neil Gaiman. Saturday and Sunday I was in Fort Worth with Dad and Boomer. Boomie is definitely subdued, but he is still reasonably active. We played catch in the backyard on Sunday afternoon. I think Boomie's dilated cardiomyopathy is weighing heavily on Dad's mind, so I'm glad I went home.

Last night I drove back here, and on the way I listened to an episode of This American Life called Break Up, which was really interesting and cute. Starlee Kline wrote a break up song with help from Phil Collins, a girl named Betsy was interviewed by Morning Edition about writing to the NYC mayor about her parents' divorce and then again some 20 years later to reflect on the initial interview, and a man talked about his cooperative divorce litigation strategy. Oh, and there was a short story about divorce from the point of view of the dog also. But my favorite part was Starlee's song, especially the parts that involved Phil Collins.

So my dog has somewhere between a few months and a year to live.

He got sick all of a sudden, and then last night while I was studying all night in the carrel, I got a call from my mom saying that he's in congestive heart failure. I called again tonight, and I guess that they've brought him home, but he'll have to go back to the hospital tomorrow for more tests. He's on a ton of meds right now to treat the congestive heart failure, and Dad is going to take him down to Texas A&M to visit the vet school there and see if he can get some new medication that might give him a year.

It's just so sudden. He's only 6 1/2 years old. Still just a baby. I really bonded with him lately, housesitting this summer and then when I was home before med school started. It so wonderful having this living creature just love you so much, and he - for all of his annoying habits - is such a loveable and sweet dog. I'm going to go home next weekend for at least part of Labor Day to chill with him.

In other news I'm gunning for the immunology exam on Monday, and then I'll have to gun for the pharmacology exam on Tuesday. The sheer amount of ridiculousness associated with these upcoming exams pretty much guarrantees that this year's faculty roast will be hilarious.

So yesterday I had some problems with the Chevy HHR rental car when I was leaving school - namely, I couldn't shift it out of park. After a lot of stressing out, I finally got it to shift by just pulling as hard as possible. This morning though I had a problem that I couldn't just force my way out of. The key wouldn't come out of the ignition when I got to school this morning. I stressed over it for like an hour before finally giving up and calling for help. Several phone calls later, I drove to a Chevy dealership followed by the incredibly wonderful/helpful Michelle, who stayed with me and then drove me back to campus when there wasn't a replacement rental car for me to get. After school Enterprise got me a new car with no hastle - a Kia Optimum, and hopefully there won't be any problems associated with it. Apparently this problem of the Chevy being too stupid to realize that it's in park and thus can release its iron grip on the key is one that the dealership has "seen before." Oh great, that's really reassuring. Now I know why my parents (and apparently Michelle's dad) say to never drive a Chevy.

So last Saturday I met this MS1 guy at a party, and in the intervening days he's called/texted me literally every day. Yesterday we had a coffee, and while he seems nice enough, I don't get that feeling that I want to be in a relationship with him. So it seems simply like it'll be another guy who doesn't meet my admittedly high expectations and will thus be rejected ... right? Well, I'm having some conflicting thoughts. On the one hand, I feel a little guilty because he clearly likes me so much (since coffee <24 hours ago, he's texted/called me twice), and I don't want to hurt his feelings. And on a related note, I feel some pressure from my friends here to just go along with it for a while until I develop feelings for him. Of course my gut reaction, when he calls me/texts me/mentions coming by to my carrel is to hide and avoid him, so I figure that my gut at least doesn't want to date him. It's not that there's anything wrong with him per se, just that I can't stand that kind of clingy behavior. We just met!

It reminds me of an episode of Sex and the City. Maybe some girls think that it's better to fake it that to be alone ... that just because a guy likes you and isn't a bad guy is reason enough to date him ... but I'm quite picky. But am I being too picky?

So now that school is back in full swing, I've decided to start excising again. I skipped all of summer, even weekends, because it's been so hot and humid. The heat has really started with a vengeance.

My stats: Biked 30 minutes

Weight: 118, not bad for no exercise all summer

So I got back from my weekend with Jacqui and Jacob late last night. It was awesome. First, they live in an adorable apartment with an absolutely gorgeous view of trees and Berkeley below, since they live on a hill. All of Berkeley/San Francisco seems to be hills. Second, they live with four adorable pets, especially Timmy the two-legged cat. He was my weekend BFF.

Highlights:
The woman sitting behind me on the way to SFO, who talked loudly the whole way there about (among other things) the fact that she and her boyfriend wouldn't be having sex that night, but when they did he had a fascination with her belly button.
BART. I love trains.
On Saturday, biking from San Francisco to Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge and then taking the ferry back. Absolutely beautiful. Plus we biked through Crissy field.
On Sunday, going to the Berkeley marina and then to San Francisco for sushi and a movie - Sunshine, a pretty good but creepy sci-fi film.
On Monday, going hiking with Jacob up into the hills of Berkeley and drinking a milkshake.
On the return flight, watching Blades of Glory.

Now though I'm sleepy after having run errands.

( beneath the cut )

Besides reading that and not getting any sleep last night, my dad and brother brought me a washer/dryer today that my dad got used from a colleague. He'll have to come over again tomorrow to change the electrical cord so that it's compatible with the outlet in my laundry room.

Just now I was looking at my newly rearranged bookshelf - with some old Star Trek books removed so that Harry Potter will once again fit - and found some legal pad papers stuffed in my copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Curious, I removed them to find genealogies that Sarah sketched out ages ago for the novel. I stuck them back inside, hoping that someday perhaps my daughter (or niece, or son, or nephew) will read the book and find them there. It made me remember that the books did belong to Sarah, but I commandeered them.

Tonight has been spent being pleasantly alone and introspective. I feel like a J.D. Salinger character. I've been reading Franny and Zooey (which no one in book club had heard about) and Nine Stories the past few days and finished them both tonight. I enjoyed them both, and they've set my mind a'spinning. They make me feel though somewhat isolated from my more "normal" peers. I met some friends for dinner (eating tapas in the posh Knox-Henderson area), and they spent the whole time bitching about working at Camp Sweeney - a diabetic-kid camp that they all work at. The whole time I wanted to be back with Franny and Zooey, not that I didn't have a nice time I suppose. Tomorrow night I'm having a few people over to watch Sex and the City, at least acting as typically twenty-something female as possible, but I'm actually more excited about going to Half-Priced Books and buying some of the books I've jotted down in my Book Book.

Anyway, I'm trying to stuff in as much reading as humanly possible before school starts up again.

I should remember this feeling. It totally pays off not to be a hermit. Last night I went to this guy Jason's birthday party at Gingerman. The whole class was invited via email, but it turned out that there were only a handful of people there. Still, it was a really fun night. I talked to some cool people, had 1 1/2 beers, and even got a good parking space. I was nervous about going at first, but it was silly - everyone was really nice when I showed up. Also in two weeks I'm going to a book release party for Harry Potter 7 at Lizzie's, and then we'll walk over to Borders to pick up our copies. I'm really excited because Lizzie's going all out for it - door prizes and costumes and party favors and stuff. I'm glad that there'll be some good, geeky fun.

Just 3 more weeks until my big vacation - San Francisco with Jacqui and Jacob, then Sarah coming to visit me.

Sometimes there is nothing a deluge-style rain storm to shift you from a depressed/emo mood to a cheerfully melancholic mood. Sort of like the powers that be are saying that it's okay to be sad and that they're giving you something to meet your mood. And it's comforting.

Plus I just like rain.

Even though this summer is the summer of way too much rain. Instead of being in a drought, I swear that the lakes/rivers are about to overflow. It rains multiple times per week here instead of not at all.

Today was a very long day at work. I started doing data analysis hardcore in the morning, and then hung out in GI clinic for almost 5 hours. I didn't get to draw any blood either because there just wasn't anyone good for the study. Hopefully next time will be better. I did though get to hear plenty about GI maladies and use the phone translator service to talk to a woman I thought would work for the study but then didn't.

So in the past 5 days I have been at the UTSW campus for 63+ hours. Hopefully I can dash out of here at 5. It's been a very full week at least. In the mornings I was going on blood draw rotations 5-6/6:30 in Parkland, which was interesting. I was really freaked out at first, but I think I got the hang of it today. Today I did a couple of absolutely perfect, smooth, nervousness-free sticks, which felt really good. Just in and out without my poor hand shaking or my stomach wobbling or having to reposition my fingers to coordinate all the tubes. So that's done with anyway.

In lab I've been doing a lot too, working on titrating out the effective dose of an antibody and then running the cells through flow cytometry, which is super cool. The first two times the data was all screwy, and I felt flustered during the procedure, but by today I was a pro. So that was good.

Update: Yay! Out at 5!

I just got back from dinner with Grace at Piranha, and on the way to and from the place (we went to Piranha in Arlington b/c she's in Dallas and I'm house sitting for my parents in Fort Worth) I listened to this episode of TAL - 81 Words. It seriously blew my mind. It's the story of a definition, they say, and how the American Psychiatric Association changed it so that homosexuality was no longer classified as a psychopathology in DSM, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. At the time of the change (1970's) it was DSM-II, and now as I learned about it, it's DSM-IV. There have been changes over the years, but in psychiatry it's still the way that medicine views diseases. You look up the definition in DSM-IV and see if the list of symptoms fits with what the patient has.

Anyway, besides just being about a fascinating topic (to me) and being very well written and edited, I find it very uplifting that science and medicine can change like this. A group of people, a confluence of events, and a smattering of good luck, can cause such a big change in the way that we as a society think about things. After all, once the APA changed its definition and announced that homosexuality isn't a disease or a mental illness and is just a normal variant of behavior, then society can follow to some extent. After all, in the 70's medical students were taught and psychiatrists believed that homosexuality = disease. Now, it's definitely not the case.

Besides that I can't really explain why this particular episode has me so a'flutter. It's just so exciting because we learned in Human Behavior just how powerful DSM is and how important that one definition in that one book is. Also, as a result of this change, every DSM definition includes the point that the symptoms must cause impairment/distress to the individual, a point which was repeatedly emphasized in class.

Am done with MS1.

Go me.

So today was the faculty roast. I'm pretty sure that it went off well and that people enjoyed it. At the last minute though there was some running around, and I was all a tizzy and panicked, but then it wound up coming together at the end. I spent a good part of the roast watching the audience's reactions, and for the most part people seemed to find this stuff funny. I know that the students enjoyed it; I just hope that the faculty did as well (though of course they couldn't be expected to get all the jokes). I'm just relieved that it's over. Now to study Endocrinology.

Oh, I also decided to run for Curriculum Committee, so we'll see what happens with that too.
Update: Ah, I am now on the Curriculum Committee.

I took some pictures of the event during it, trying to get pictures of all of the actors. They're on Facebook now in case anyone's interested. I also took a picture of the 3 profs who volunteered for Are You Smarter Than a Medical Student - Amatruda, Tansey, and Jenkins, one of my favorite professors. She at least got her question right (I think it was defining slang re. rims), and so did Graybeal + Burns in the audience (who did Brittney Spears recently divorce). The rest though missed their questions - Amatruda (some fiendishly hard embryology question), Tansey (what does "Fo' shizzle my nizzle" mean?), and Wagner in the audience (which one of these is not a real band). That skit turned out funnier than I thought it would. (It wasn't one that I was involved in, so I also didn't know what to expect.)

Now I'm outside enjoying the rest of my free lunch - sandwich, large cookie (not as big as a Grinnell big cookie, but larger than normal), and 3 packages of M&Ms.

So we finally got our grades back for the Human Behavior final exam, a whopping 3 days after taking the exam. (That's a lot since the average time is usually about 1 day.) In that time I have honestly had 2 grade-related nightmares. In the first I got a 13% and then fell to the floor outside of the mailboxes and started crying. Dr. Jenkins, my favorite professor, came by and stared at me. In the second a classmate told me that we weren't getting our grades back for a week because the average was a 72 (F), and there was an investigation into why we're so stupid. Thankfully last night was nightmare-free. Otherwise I was saying that I was going to write Dr. Jenkins an email asking for my grade since my subconscious was very anxious about this.

Otherwise I'm just chilling and trying to motivate myself to be diligent about endocrinology. It's so hard when the weather is nice, and there're so many other things to think about like the faculty roast, which I'm helping to write for, and summer is in the air. So tonight I think I'm going to make myself abstain from Grey's Anatomy, which has me a little annoyed because of its recent stupidity, and not even go see Assoc. Dean Dr. Wagner performing w/ his band at a fundraiser for the Monday Clinic. I really want to go because it seems so adorable and Grinnell-esque.

The faculty roast seems to be going well. I hope other people will find it funny. I've been working hard on it with Michelle, and that's been fun. I also hope that we don't upset the professors since, in the emails giving us permission to roast them, Drs. Hilgemann and Jenkins made reference to the idea that in the past the portrayals of them have been mean, which makes me feel bad for them. Of course I also want my peers to approve of what I've written. It's a fun feeling though - writing up things for other people to perform. I have the feeling that I'll be involved in future faculty roasts and in the big 4th year video. It's nice to have an outlet for my creativity.

So I wound up doing quite well on the Neuro final, for a final grade of A, almost definitely.

A day later or so though Dr. Tansey (course director) sent out an email saying that they had found the last 2 lectures hidden in the women's bathroom. They found it such that they know that no one was able to cheat, but still it's pretty sad to think that someone here stooped to that level. They're investigating the matter, and the person who did it is encouraged to step forward. Of course, the person wasn't terribly smart because it was her own personal syllabus, complete with highlighting and handwritten notes.

Just a few more days before the human behavior final, which I'm not worried about. At least I got my overnighted new power cable today, so CJ and I will be able to rock this. (I tripped over the old one and broke it.)

Faculty roast is coming up soon too. I love working on it because the meetings always make me laugh hysterically.

The night before the neuro final though I was feeling really depressed, and I went in to talk to a psychiatrist through student mental health on Tuesday. She gave me a referral to get therapy through the school, and I'm thinking about whether to turn it in now. I guess I'm leaning towards turning it in, but I'm still not 100%. It seems like a big step, saying that yes I need professional help to become normal and not have social anxiety/be avoidant.

So after feeling totally stressed and emo-like during the week and getting through the Neuro exam (for which grades still aren't posted), I had a pretty good weekend. It was very relaxing. I mostly just hung out with Grace and Nate, and then on Saturday Grace and I ran the Fort Worth Zoo 5K (me, t=34 mins) and 10K (her). It was a lot of fun even though I had like no sleep before that because I had some insomnia the night before.

Anyway, I'm afraid that I didn't do so well on the Neuro final, so I can't wait until I get the grades. Probably it'll be sometime tomorrow.

In other news, the other thing going on right now are preparations for the faculty roast. So I'm trying to bring the funny.

So yesterday was the Neuroanatomy exam, and afterwards I decided to be all social. First I went to Two Rows for a little bit, had a beer, and hung out with some pretty cool people. Dr. Tansey showed up too, but late enough that I didn't get to talk to him and had already bought my own drink. Then, because Grace was so excited to go, I went to Martini Ranch. At first I was feeling very antisocial because it's an incredibly crowded and loud bar, but eventually things calmed down. I talked to Guy I Kissed at Halloween, who always makes a point to talk to me at these sort of parties, and last night he asked me out to the formal. How very high school. I'm not sure how I feel about this so far. It usually takes me a while to process these sort of things. I guess I'm excited and nervous, and I'm not sure how I feel about him yet since I don't really know him. But hopefully the formal will be nice, and we'll have a good time. Grace got extremely squeal-ful when she heard the news. I guess we'll be going to buy me a new dress for the event.

Oh yeah, and we also saw Owen Wilson there, which made Nate very excited.