Thursday, June 02, 2005

Playing Doctor

This is the link to my new blog about my residency years. Who knows how many times I'll post but as you can see, I didn't post much during the 4th year of med school anyway.

THis is definitely the last post here. Thanks for reading!
~me~ at 1:55 PM

Monday, May 30, 2005

Well, I've graduated from Tulane Medical School and I've been a doctor for 10 whole days and 3 hours. I don't feel any different. It was a fun event. I actually got an award on Ivy Day for having the highest GPA of all the family medicine future residents. I got $200 and a form to declare my award to the IRS. damn tulane. Oh well, it will pay for a tv or my couch I bought today (which I love!). I'm glad I went to Ivy day. Andy's dad accepted an award for the med student who overcame adversity to continue with medical training. Andy had died in November from his cancer. It was pretty sad and made me cry a bit just because Andy would have been such an incredible physician. I swear he could do anything! Graduation itself was fun. Instead of marching in to pomp and circumstance (the typical graduation theme), we marched to a fun song played by a local jazz band. David did a great job with his speech as did Debbie. The guest speaker was lame. I tuned him out after the first 5 minutes...he talked about his AIDS research and something about people being subsidized...my little crew (the J-K last names) were laughing softly and joking during most of it. Disrespectful perhaps but the guy was really boring. Then came the best part - the hooding ceremony. My only fear was passing out or tripping on stage. Instead my cap kept falling off. Dr. Crabtree did my hooding...she called me a spaz during her neuro lecture cause I couldn't sit still. Then we took the hippocratic oath. And finally we heard the school alma mater (didn't know we had one until that day) sung by Amber, Dan, Ed, and Ariane. They had to use words but Zia said he felt so unspirited when he noticed that the members of the 1955 class were all singing the song without difficulty. It's a nice song. And when we marched out, we marched to 2nd Line with our little umbrellas that say "Welcome to the Class of 2005"; they're from the alumni association, which I can join for a mere $1000. I owe $174322...the alumni assn will have to wait. We went to dinner at Drago's and heather came (jeff was on call). Then later that night Chris and I went out with my friends to Mimi's and then DBA. We got back at 4 am and had to get up at 8 am for the swamp tour at 10 am.
Sunday night we went to Harrah's for dinner at the buffet. It was alright. Then my mom gave me $20 to gamble so uncle george could get free parking. We had to play for 30 minutes. First I tried the quarter machine...lost $5. Then I moved to the nickel machine...an hour later, I had a net win of $2.45, $20 worth of parking, 2 cases of coke, and a free blockbuster rental (can't remember where that blockbuster thing is though).
Monday morning the movers came (see below for more about that). Then later that night, I met my friends for one last time at Donna's. Oddly enough, I wasn't as sad as I thought I would be. I guess it just hasn't hit that I won't be seeing them every week.
Tuesday morning we hit the road for Portland. We stopped at the Grand Canyon - very impressive but kind of got boring afterawhile (3 hours). I took pictures but they don't do the canyon justice. I'm reading a book called "How the Canyon Became Grand" Then we went to the Hoover Dam. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be but the river was massive at that point and very blue (it looked pea green at the canyon). We rolled into Portland friday evening and I got to see my beautiful niece Payton. She's now 4 months old and loves to smile and "talk" when she's happy. She was squealing very loudly at the restaurant. So cute! I got to spend some quality time with her. They're moving back to Hawaii in a week or 2. Good thing I didn't choose a sacramento program! So when I go home in august, I'll get to see her too!
As far as the moving thing. I called wednesday to find out when my stuff would get to portland and the lady told me the 27th but nobody showed up all day. So I called saturday and a better employee actually looked up my info and saw that the stuff didn't even leave louisiana until the 25th and that it wouldn't get over the oregon border until June 1st. She even made a note that delivery on the 8th was preferred and told me to call again tomorrow to see where the stuff was. I also left a message with my local agent to see if he knew anything...still waiting for that call back (probably tomorrow in the early morning with my luck!). Anyway, if they can wait until the 8th to deliver, then that would be the best.
The loan officer didn't get my bank statement I sent so I need to give him another copy of that. And I thought I told him I couldn't get a 3 year deferment but my realtor told me he's waiting for that document as well. Ugh! He told me that it wouldn't affect the loan but that I would be listed second instead of as the primary.
Today we bought a crapload of stuff for the house. My parents bought the washer, dryer, refrigerator, and microwave. I bought a fun couch. It has a chaise incorporated and it can be moved to the middle or either end of the couch. and it's modular so the arms come off to fit through tight spaces. I love it! Then I got a headache from not eating and felt like I was going to barf while we were at Fred Meyer looking for a tv cabinet. Got that and now to find the tv!

Okay, so this is going to be the last post at this blog...or maybe one more. I'm now going to create a new blog which will be linked to this one for my residency years. It's hard to believe that 4 years have come and gone and now I'm a doctor. It's still weird to be called Dr. I guess I'll get used to it.
~me~ at 9:32 PM

Sunday, May 15, 2005

I'm incredibly bored. My body has decided that 7 am is the new wakeup time. There's nothing on tv so I've resorted to online bingo. And for the first time ever, I actually won! Okay, so I won 10 tickets to win $50. But a win is a win. As soon as stores start opening up, I'm out of here. I need food.
~me~ at 8:21 AM

Monday, May 09, 2005

asparagus makes my pee stinky.

and that concludes this installment of "Cara's Body Fluids"
~me~ at 8:50 PM

Let's Play a fun game! It's called, "How much money does Cara owe for her Education?"

Any Guesses? If you win you get the pleasure of paying one month of loan repayment! What?!? Not a good prize? Okay, okay, I'll let you pay up to 24 months of my loan, if you insist.

Well, this game really sucks so I'll just tell you: the grand total is $174332!!! Though $3069 is from undergrad...a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things really.

So I don't start payments until December and once the grace period ends, I file for deferment or forbearance, whichever I qualify for (deferment being better). And so I think I'll live on $1.50 polish sausages from costco...do ketchup and relish count as vegetables? Oh and I have lots of miso soup and I suppose a bag of rice would last for awhile. The 3rd world diet could help me lose a few pounds...and hey, with adequate malnutrition, I'll stop having menstrual cycles and thus won't need any of those supplies. Can't dump the thyroid medicine though, that keeps me from being comatose. Yep, life is looking good! (sarcasm: learn it, recognize it, deal with it).

Why did I have such expensive goals?!?
~me~ at 12:56 PM

Monday, May 02, 2005

Okay, my router may be working okay now. But I've got a new one on the way. It may be wrong, but i think I'll hold off on sending this one back once i get the new one until i get to portland and test things out. this may be short lived so i don't want to be too happy over it. In the meantime, i'm still waiting for my replacement aria card (the 11g card) that wasn't working right. it was delivered on saturday...actually attempted delivery, but the place was closed and so i sent an email to them letting them know the tracking number and neal, the guy helping me, is going to get things figured out so a new card can be sent to me. The hinge for my computer was ordered so now i need to backup all my important files...looks like an excellent job for my ipod since i got the new ipod photo by taking in my old ipod (it was messing up songs). I wonder if I can just dump the entire HD file onto the ipod and have it work... time to find out!
~me~ at 9:35 PM

Saturday, April 30, 2005

It's raining. And my street is flooded. So I can't go out and get boxes to pack my place up until the river that used to be my street dries up. I was also going to see if any of the stores around here sold 5.8 ghz phones. The 900 mhz phone I have is dying on me and the 2.4 ghz phone has too much static and can interfere with my wireless router.

Speaking of my router, it seems that the reason it doesn't work anymore could be because my neighbor created a wireless network and it's interfering with my network. Seems lame that is super router can have such a pathetic problem. The Belkin folks are sending me a new router anyway...someday. I haven't heard anything yet. I'm going to read now.
~me~ at 11:16 AM

Friday, April 29, 2005

Today I went to the other apple computer reseller and that guy said that it might be possible to just replace the frame so I'm heading out to show him my baby in hopes that the cost for repair is lower. But the best news is that the grocery store remodel is complete and it's beautiful. I almost cried. Then I starting having issues at the bakery when I had to decide between the fresh baked olive loaf vs the garlic loaf. I went garlic this time. So much for a low carb diet since I plan on eating bread for the next few days so I can then go back and buy the olive loaf. If I were alone, I think I would have allowed my self to drool. It was too much! I'm eating some of the bread now. I have to go get some good garlic to roast. I don't care if I'll stick like garlic...it's garlic fest time in my world!

Sad news...my classmate, John Berberian was killed yesterday in a car accident. He had matched in a kick ass neurosurgery program and was the funniest and nicest guys I've ever met. Our class must be cursed since we have had 2 deaths (andy and john), 5 other people had to leave for other medical reasons (2 are in the class of 2006 now), several had identity theft problems...Now I need to get something to protect myself I guess!

In the meantime, I'm going to eat more bread and take my computer in. I wonder if whole foods has opened yet? I want to get the morningstar lentil loaf and sav a center doesn't carry it. ooooh and whole foods has the olive bar with unlimited samples!
~me~ at 2:18 PM