my links
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friend's blogs
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fun stuff
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about me
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name: cara l.c. kawahara
dob: july 22, 1977 (gifts accepted) birthplace: honolulu, hawaii family: dad, mom, 2 brothers, 1 sister-in-law, 1 niece, 2 grandparents, 6 aunts, 8 uncles, 17 cousins, 5 2nd cousins (twin boys on the way will make that 7) places i've lived: pearl city, hawaii eugene, oregon new orleans, louisiana metairie, louisiana schools i've attended: our savior lutheran preschool pearl harbor elementary school highlands intermediate school pearl city high school university of oregon tulane university school of medicine occupation: medical student what i want to be when i grow up: family physician |
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Life at Med School
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| the life of a torn bubble trying to stay afloat |
ugh! I was better off just watching the lsu game. Then again, as I told my classmates, oregon would find a way to screw up and lose and i was right. Ridnour is a moron. They could have held utah off to get into OT but the idiot fouled on a 3 point shot and then the team of morons attempted 2 3-pointers instead of getting a 2 pointer to once again, get into OT. I guess you can't expect much thinking from athletes in a tournament. There's more than 1 way to win, you freaks.
I'm bored. ESPN is not showing the oregon game at all so I'm pissed about that. All they're showing is the stupid LSU/Purdue game. Not even little snipets. I'm bored.
Talk about two different exams! The written portion of the micro exam was 100 times harder than the lab final we had today (not that I'm complaining about it). There was only 1 question that was debateable since I couldn't quite tell if the zone of discoloration would count as a zone of inhibition (usually it looked clear when we did the same test in the lab session). But turns out I was right. Maybe they just wanted to have a reason not to let us have friday completely off before spring break started.
I heard something on NBC news that made me laugh. Apparently one of the tools the CIA/US army/whatever is to ask one of Saddam Hussein's ex-mistresses if she thought the video of him shown on Iraqi tv was really him. Hmmmm...of all the tools they have at hand, they're using someone who had a fling with him. I'm hoping her "expert" testimony isn't weighted that heavily. Do you suppose Mrs. Hussein is pissed or if she knew her husband was fooling around? If not, Saddam must be in trouble from the Mrs...oh this is assuming that things such as infidelity are as important as say, trying to avoid being killed. Do you suppose the Republican Guard is just playing psychological games with the US Army? You know, convince them that they're going to give up and then allow the US army to come in and then say, "ha ha april fools!" and then attack them? Of course, april 1st isn't for awhile so this would be one hell of an operation to complete. Who knows...I found out that one of Jess' high school friends that came to visit last year, Will, was just sent off to the Gulf this week. He went to West Point. My few classmates that were on active duty before starting med school won't have to worry about going over. And you can't exactly send the med students on the military scholarships over there since I personally can't see my classmates who fall into this category as capable of contributing much in the way of killing over there. In fact, I was surprised to find out who was getting the military scholarships. These are people who freak out at the sight of little bugs (not roaches but baby spiders and other bugs I have no fear of smushing). Yeah, I'm talking about the girls. I'm sure the guys would be able to hold their own. The sad thing is that the military scholarship is probably safer than the National health service corps scholarship since many of those open spots are in the inner cities and there's no way of knowing when danger can sneak up on you there whereas if you've got the military scholarship and you get sent to a battlesite, you kind of know that the danger is there. eh, I guess they're a little similar in danger. At least in inner cities/high crime cities are the best trauma centers in the nation so you can be confident that the best will be there to try and save you. What have you got in a battle field? Nothing but bacteria. Oh wait, that was more of a problem in the wars before penicillin. But then you figure that most bacteria are now resistant to penicillin and other powerful antimicrobials so perhaps the danger is still there. Hmmm...we haven't really progressed much have we? The lesson, if your doctor tells you it's probably viral, don't hassle him/her for drugs since all you'll do is make it possible for those opportunistic bacteria living within you to attack your body and then you'll need even more powerful antibiotics because those bacteria are resistant to the stuff you begged for to treat that stupid common cold. Suck it up and in 24-48 hours, you'll be fine and won't be attacked by the normal flora of your body. Well, that's enough rambling for now. I've gone over my notes for lab a few times and since my exam doesn't start until 10 am (because Dr. Buchanan doesn't want to go to school early just to set up this exam), I can get a good night's sleep and then do a bit more of a review. And then Spring break!!!
Went to the Match festivities. All the 4th years I know are leaving town though Henry will be here for his preliminary year so maybe I'll see him around when I do my medicine rotation next year. It was pretty exciting to see how well the class did in the match and yet we also heard about some girl who didn't match in derm and she was AOA (the honor society) so goes to show you that nothing really matters in that sense. But then again derm is pretty competitive. Yep, good thing I don't want to look at skin for the next 30-40 years of my professional life. This year's class was pretty primary care oriented since the majority are doing medicine followed by peds, family, and surgery. Completely different from last year's class that had tons of surgery matches. Michele is going to be at UCSF so that's pretty cool. Maybe if I feel like it and can get accepted, I'll try and do a little rotation there in my 4th year and stay with craig (won't he love that!). Today for growth and development we got stood up by our usual med-peds guy (Conrad) and had a whirlwind session with the ever entertaining Dr. Hebert. He gave us a nice talk about how poor we'll be if we do primary care and not have additional sources of income (like helping out with clinical trials and other stuff - he talked too fast for me to pick up on anything else). Apparently next year we get a little talk from him about how much money we won't have. He seems like a fun person to have as a pediatrician or even as an attending (my last rotation for next year). And now I'm studying for the micro lab final. My body aches from the tackling and passing drills but hey, at least my head seems to have suffered no permanent damage. Charity has a black eye from whatever happened at practice (she thinks it could have been as lame as getting hit in the face when trying to catch the ball so she's telling some people that she took an elbow to the face...she cracks me up!)
Rugby was fun until we started practicing tackling. I hate falling and I hate falling backwards. You would too if you've had the amount of injuries I've had from falling (2 broken bones, stitches on my head, thousands of bruises). Well, Christina and I were practicing this and I said, well, what if I just ran around you and so she challenged me to do so. When I realized it wasn't going to happen, I stopped running and figured the drill was over. She decided it wasn't and threw me down anyway. Since I wasn't expecting this at all, I hit the back of my head on the hard ground. All I ended up with was a sore head, fortunately, but now I hate tackling more than ever.
I've got rugby tonight I must be getting old. It's only 5 pm and I'm already feeling tired. Same thing yesterday. Must be the stress of a relaxing weekend clouded by watching "The Ring." In other news, both lunches were delivered without fail. Only 1 person showed up to the elections meeting. These T1s are lame. They don't participate in a lot of other activities as well. Maybe they think they're too cool for it or could care less. At today's PIG/FMIG meeting, 80% were T2s and T1s started leaving after 30 minutes (aka after they ate the free food) and it was and interesting meeting! All the questions were posed by my classmates. And it's not like the T1s have exams coming up either! One the T1s that I do know really well told me that he hates going to his class parties because it seems like a majority of his classmates are one and the same. They all came direct from college and did pretty much the same things at different colleges. And since Louis had been working for a few years before going back to school, he really has no interest in the "what I did in college" conversations. Now, we did that as well in the beginning but apparently that string of conversation is still occuring. So, with a few exceptions, the T1s are lame.
I just ordered food for the PIG/FMIG meeting tomorrow and I can honestly say that it always scares me when I order food through someone who appears to have never taken an order before. The #1 fear I have is that the food will not arrive at all because of this rookie employee or if they misunderstand me for some reason. Well, today I'll find out if friday's order for Café Roma went through and tomorrow will be the test for the Pepperoni's Pizza order. On another note, my new website is working fine. I think angelfire is overloaded with websites but it's free and there's tons of space. But I've already said all that.
Yea! I got my new website up! The one sucky thing is that if you access it too much, as I have been doing in the process of setting it up and checking links, it gets temporarily suspended. By temporarilly I mean 2 hours. It's lame but at least it's working unlike the server I was using before hand. That server went psycho. It's not fancy but fancy=time consuming so I think that for a weekend, it's not too bad. I like the background colors since it matches my blanket I knit this year. I added yellow cause it looks pretty. Yes, purple and yellow are contrasting colors but that's why I like it! I love the animations. Just be warned that for some reason it may not always load and you get an error page (weak server I guess), just hit reload and it should come up okay. I decided to use my translator that came as a part of the system software and every page is in a different language. Just to let you know, "photos" is the informal french for "photos". Yeah, shut up. "Photographies" was too long for it to look right (the s always got shifted to the next line). And Resumé is the english word there but there's no accent for the animated letters. Can you guess what languages the others are in? Like I said, if it isn't translated correctly, blame it on the program but tell me and I'll fix it. Well, I'm off to bed. I've got a meeting tomorrow and I have to order 15 pizzas for the meeting on tuesday.
Ugh! For some reason I can no longer load stuff up to the server I used for my old website so now I've got everything on the angelfire server. I guess that's okay but I've already used up the space. I guess since I have multiple email addresses I could theoretically sign up for multiple accounts and link them all together. Oh and Safari, apple's browser, sucks. It can't load the pages with animations correctly. Lame.
Oh, one more thing. The other day when I was driving home from Best Buy (window shopping), I passed by a car dealership. You know how they'll have special promos to get you to test drive a car like a free movie or something else like that? Well, I saw what has got to be the dumbest promo that would only entice the dumbest person to do a test drive. They were offering a free bottle of Dasani water! Yeah, because $1 is just too much to spend on water such that I'm willing to spend time to fill out a form. Or better yet, how's this thought process: Hmmm...I think I want a new car but I should go on a test drive first. Wow! Free water!!! Hey, I should test drive one of those cars! Yeah, I'd like to know just how many people came for a test drive for the water.
Well, I had a nice relaxing weekend. I sat out in the sunshine friday afternoon. I was going to swim but there were bugs and leaves in the pool and my recent studies in microbiology have made me more paranoid of the small bugs that live in the pool. Especially since I had a couple little cuts on my hands and legs...hey, I live a rough life with all those papercuts and such. I pretty much decided to have a low key weekend and didn't go to any of the school parties. I worked on my other website and soon will upload it. I also read more of C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters." It's taking me forever to finish it just because it requires more brain power than studying for exams (that's a scary thought huh?). On Saturday I sat out in the sun and studied a bit for Step 1. Later that night I watched "The Ring" with Jeff and Stephanie. Actually, to be accurate, Jeff watched the movie and Stephanie and I listened to it but only peeked out from under the pillows when Jeff said it wasn't scary anymore. It was pretty good (at least from what I saw). To get the horrible images from our minds, we watched some home movies of Steph's dancing days in high school. Kind of reminded me of watching Kendra and Carly's dance team routines. It's very scary to see how coordinated a bunch of people can be...even their hair moved in the same way. This morning we went out for mcdonalds and then watched some parts of "The Ring" in slow motion. It's less scary in the daytime. But now we're kind of curious to see the Japanese movie it was a remake of ("Ringu"). And now I'm just hanging out and maybe I'll finish my book.
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| where have all the monkeys gone? |
. I haven't gone for 2 weeks now since the first practice after mardi gras I was too tired to consider even going and last week I had 2 exams to study for. This week I have my lab final to study for but I don't feel as stressed out about that one as the other 2. I kind of also want to have some fun tonight. Now that this little war is going to be happening, there isn't going to be anything good on tv that won't be interrupted for little news briefs on how the troops moved a whole inch to the north closer to baghdad. Funny news: Apparently the Dixie Chicks made some statement about being embarassed that GW is from texas and now all these country radio stations are refusing to play their music and fans are breaking their dixie chicks cds and other stupid things. So someone finally has the guts to say what they feel and they get crap for it. How many other people not in the public spotlight feel the exact same way and yet aren't attacked as heavily... I guess that's the price you pay for being a celebrity. I have to admit, some of the pictures of GW promoting his war do make him look like a freakin nut. He always seems to have an emptyness behind his eyes...no matter how serious he's trying to be, I never feel like I'm hearing it from an intelligent person but rather a puppet reading from some script. What's the deal with these Bush men and Saddam Hussein...all we need is a pair of star crossed lovers.