Dinner and a Movie. May it rest in peace.

I just got done watching Grey's Anatomy. (Yes, I do watch, and love, Grey's Anatomy. I think George and I are soulmates.) Meredith just told McDreamy and the vet that she is NOT going to choose. She is going to try *gasp* dating them both! I feel as though most people would read that sentence as "*gasp* dating them both!" However, my mind emphasizes "*gasp* dating them both!" Meredith was right, the concept of dating (at least in my experience) is pretty obsolete.

Katie and I have discussed this, and we both have noticed the death of the date. Not since highschool has someone called me (on the phone, no AIM, e-mail, or dreaded facebook) to ask me if I might enjoy dinner, or possibly a movie. (In highschool, I think we may have even spent a little time in the Funset Boulevard arcade after the show. It was a different era.) Instead, I have been asked to "hang out", "study later", "come over and eat pizza", " 'watch' a movie on the couch", etc. (And actually, none of those things recently, but that's another sad, sad story. It's a dating desert out there.) And, honestly, I don't really mind hanging out, studying, making out while not watching movies, or eating pizza. The problem is that it leaves such ambiguity. Where are you really? Friends? Friends w/benefits? Hooking up? Actually enjoying eachother's company enough to stay together? How's a girl supposed to know?

Sometimes the ambiguity is good. Leaves a little wiggle room. Maybe I don't know if I want to be friends with benefits, hooking up, or starting something with actual > 2-week-term potential. But, I will admit. . . It would be nice, just once and awhile, to gather up my 1.21 gigawatts and pretend it's 1956. I would love to hear of someone, anyone (doesn't even have to be me) having dinner, drinks, and a promising walk-you-to-the-door kind of kiss. Isn't it just a little bit fun to get polished up, then look in the mirror with a little smile and a few stomach butterflies on the edge of something where serious disaster and serious fun are both equally likely outcomes? Aren't we all just a little romantically traditional at heart?

This post is dedicated to Katie K. Us and our men, what are we to do?

Looking Forward

I took my pharmacology test yesterday, and I have a little room to breathe this week. I actually just got back from the grocery store, so I no longer have to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches (made with my roommates' peanut butter) and pickles. (Thought question-- creamy or chunky? Don't answer too quickly, both have merits. Overall though, chunky gets my vote. . . gotta have the crunch.)

I'm in my living room telling myself that I need to start doing my reading at 6pm (It's 5:52) while listening to an mix of Norah Jones and The Fray (a CD my old roommate left in the player). I think the combination of romantic jazz piano and Isaac Slade's attempts at soulfulness are making me pensive. Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about where we would be and what we would do if we could be anywhere, doing anything. I said I would return to Sydney, drink coffee early in the morning as the sun rose over the harbor while editing the latest of my popular scientific/medical articles to be published in Scientific American. The thing is, I don't really want to do that right now. I want to be a doctor. . . But I still could someday. It isn't a dream that far out of reach-- which is encouraging. The first truly encouraging thought I've had for awhile. So look for me in Australia in 20 years.



Damn. 6:02pm. Time to work.

Iatrogenic Disease

Iatrogenic
Pronunciation: (")I-"a-tr&-'je-nik
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek iatros physician + English -genic
: induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures (an iatrogenic rash)

Ugh. My social life has iatrogenic disease, and school is my iatrogenic rash. Being a second year student is rough sometimes. Nothing is that hard, but there just aren't enough hours in the day to learn everything while also doing normal-person things like exercising, showering, and grocery shopping. So, needless to say, it's been awhile since I've written anything on here. (Since my last entry three weeks ago I've had two midterm exams, one final, five quizzes, one write-up, one clinic day, and a partridge in a pear tree.)

Unfortunately, seeing as its already 12:20 am, and I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, this is going to have to be brief as well. Good thing not much exciting happens when all one does is study.

Amy's life occurrences in a nutshell:
- I got a new wallet and credit cards.
- Congrats to Curt and Nate for surviving IronmanWisconsin, and to Curt for qualifying for Hawaii! I watched the beginning of the swim, it was great.
- My grandma had major eye surgery (she's going to be using one of the eye prostheses I learned a little about at LV Prasad in India)
- Iowa State broke my heart by losing to Iowa 17-27 in Iowa City. (Good thing I'm no fair weather fan!) But I did win a T-shirt door prize at the ISU Madison Alum Club gathering. (Yes, I went to an ISU Madison Alum Club gathering.)
- Dealing with stress by shopping (mainly online, for shoes)
- Holla for drinking beer while studying
- I received a Facebook message thank you for a wedding gift I gave! (Emily Post would be displeased-- what is this world coming to??)
- I went to a wedding (different one from the facebook thank you gift) where the husband took the bride's name. Interesting.
- Mom came to Madison to hang with me for the afternoon and share her infinite wisdom with the members of the UW Women in Medicine group. We had a fun afternoon talking, and Mom makes killer margaritas.

Ok, hoping for 5 hours of sleep if I go to bed now. If I wouldn't procrastinate so much, I'd be better off. But it's just more fun to make cookie's for the Dean's Cup (a hard-core competition between the med and law schools at UW) bake-off while watching Project Runway than to study pharmacology. Oh well.

Crocs Rule!

Did you know that Steve Irwin died?? I didn't until this morning. I was reading the Top News stories on my Google homepage when the tragic headline caught my eye. Cause of death-- stingray.

Here's a quote from the Forbes story, "Stingrays have a serrated, toxin-loaded barb, or spine, on the top of their tail. The barb, which can be up to 10 inches long, flexes if a ray is frightened. Stings usually occur to people when they step on or swim too close to a ray and can be excruciatingly painful but are rarely fatal, said University of Queensland marine neuroscientist Shaun Collin. Collin said he suspected Irwin died because the barb pierced under his ribcage and directly into his heart. 'It was extraordinarily bad luck. It's not easy to get spined by a stingray and to be killed by one is very rare,' Collin said. "

Huh. Lucky shot by the stingray.

And what a memorial. . . "At Australia Zoo at Beerwah, south Queensland, floral tributes were dropped at the entrance, where a huge fake crocodile gapes. Drivers honked their horns as they passed. 'Steve, from all God's creatures, thank you. Rest in peace,' was written on a card with a bouquet of native flowers."

http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/
ap/2006/09/04/ap2991321.html

And for more random Steve Irwin, this is a cartoon I found online (http://crap.jinwicked.com/imgs/comics/20040108.jpg) satirizing the situation after Irwin fed crocodiles with one hand while holding his baby son in the other.



Crikey, what a legacy.

Chemical and Physical Injury

The lecture was titled "Chemical and Physical Injury", and here's a few quotations from my pre-reading for the class:

"Specific Objectives. Be able to discuss the following:
. . . 11. Mechanism of death by electrocution and lightning.
12. How to distinguish gunshot injuries at various distances.
13. Definitions, types, and features of the various asphyxiations.
(Morbid, huh. It does boggle my mind a little that I may actually have to someday apply these learning Objectives.)

I. Chemical Injury
A. Ethyl Alcohol (ethanol)
. . . 5. Neurological complications: . . . The combination of cerebral atrophy and intoxication predisposes and alcoholic to intracranial subdural hemorrhage from ground level falls.
(This is the fanciest way possible to say, "drinking kills your brain cells, and when drunk on top of having a small brain, alcoholics easily fall over and seriously hurt themselves.")

G. Cocaine
. . . Rectal insertion of crack (butt crack) is also an effective means of cocaine administration. While there are no good studies on bioavailability regarding this method, anatomic consideration support this as an effective route. . .
(Huh.)

II. Physical Injury. . .
B. Sharp Force Injury
. . . 3. Chops: A chop (axe) wound may also be categorized as a type of sharp force injury. These injuries often combine elements of blunt and sharp force trauma. An example of this is an incision and fracture produced by an axe blow to the head. . .

G. Environmental Hypothermia
. . . 3. A unique feature of deaths due to hypothermia is paradoxical undressing. Near death, an individual may experience burning paresthesia and subsequently take off clothing. This is often very confusing to uninitiated death investigators. . .

H. Asphyxiation (Adult content here)
. . . 5. Autoerotic asphyxiation: A unique form of asphyxia occurs in the setting of self-induced hypoxia during autoerotic activity. Orgasm is reportedly heightened by non-lethal hypoxia. In fact, many volunteers in the blood-pressure-cuff-around-the-neck study indicated a degree of pleasure from the experience. . . Because of the short duration needed to lose consciousness, individuals engaging in this activity are at risk for death. Do not try this at home."
(Say what?!? First-- who would volunteer for a study where you get a blood pressure cuff put around your neck. And second-- I think I will make a point of never trying this at home.)

Uranus is Next

"After a week of contentious public and private debate, a small cluster of astronomers has voted to demote Pluto from its planetary status. Rejecting an expansive definition proposed by a special committee, the astronomers of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined a planet as: a celestial body that orbits around the sun; has sufficient mass to become round; and has "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." On the strength of puny Pluto's inability to dominate nearby Neptune, whose orbit it crosses, as well as to clear out the Kuiper belt of many Pluto-size objects, it fails to qualify as a planet under the new definition. "
"Astronomers Relegate Pluto to Dwarf Status." ScientificAmerican.com

This just rocks me to my elementary school core! Imagine how many mobiles, styrofoam dioramas, and tri-fold poster board science fair projects are now obsolete!

My friend Nick wants to make Save Pluto T-shirts in honor of the ice ball getting demoted to JV status in team solar system. We debated about the saying on the back--"Uranus is next" beat out "There's a hole in my soul-ar system."

I'm currently at Atlanta Bread Company procrastinating while I should be reading about colorectal cancer. I had to stop looking at pathology slides because the internet site went from ok to slow to really slow to "This page cannot be displayed." So I'm wasting time nerdily reading the Scientific American website until 3pm when I need to call Badger Cab to see if they found my wallet. (I had to borrow $10 from my roommate to get lunch today. Not having money, driver's license, credit cards, or your student ID makes daily life a challenge.)

Opening Remarks

I dedicate this blog to Julia who needs more to do at work, and apparently enjoys reading about me!