Eh...What's Up, Doc?

As a cure for the packing burnout I began to suffer this afternoon (and to procrastinate further on my moving goals for the day), I decided to give Buttercup a carrot and see how she liked it. I have been giving her sliced up pieces of carrot lately when I am snacking on them, but today I thought it would be fun to see what she'd do with a whole one. Turns out she can put it away in less than two minutes, no problem. This video is less entertaining than it would be if my commentary was picked up by the mike (well, in my opinion anyway), but I still think she's pretty fun to watch (she is a lil camera shy, I think, cuz she always gets this self-conscious expression on her face):

It Has Begun!

Yes, after much excuse-making and avoidance over the weekend, the fun of packing up all of our crap has commenced. For some reason, whenever I am moving, I feel like packing up my DVDs, CDs, and books is going to be the most frustrating part, so I always start with those. It takes all of ten minutes, even though I have a fair number of books. Then I have to do the stuff I really dislike, like deciding which clothes to get rid of, packing up all my shoes, and going through all my desk drawers (which I haven't done since the last time I moved). My goals for today involved attacking the upstairs (which is basically our bedroom). I managed to get all my clothes together in one room (I still hadn't retrieved my summer clothes from storage and there were several bags tagged for the Salvation Army ages ago down there as well) and then I proceeded to organize them: five bags for SA (and I even dropped them off there!); two suitcases containing the majority of my clothes, minus sweatshirts, workout clothes, pajamas (all of which made their way into various boxes), those in the to-be-cleaned pile that is my laundry basket, a few things for the rest of the week, and of course, shoes (which get their own box); packing up towels, sheets, and blankets; and finding homes for miscellaneous books and the like that weren't already in boxes. Since I already took care of the DVDs, CDs, and books yesterday, as well as the breakables, the upstairs is in pretty good shape. Alex has his clothes to sort out and I haven't started on my toiletries or bathroom stuff yet since I will be using a lot of it between now and Thursday, but it's looking good. The venture down in the storage unit forced me to clear out and pack up a lot of that stuff too, so it's really just the aforementioned things and the downstairs. That is going to be a bitch...for Alex, anyway. He has crammed so much fishing equipment into our pantry/broom closet. I do not envy him that job! Anyhoo, stay tuned for more updates on our sanity status as the big move looms ever closer.

And here's Buttercup, amidst the deluge of clothing (all gone now!). She was pretty much overwhelmed by what she saw and that I continued bringing stuff into the house from the storage room (not that she knew it was coming from there...it probably seemed like magic to her).

After a while of making sure she was constantly in my way, her puppiness took over and she had to grab a nap (or two). Though if she smelled food or sensed I was heading upstairs again, her "I'm going to miss out" sensors were activated and she just had to check back in with me.

Well, it's a mere six days until we move (although technically we are leaving late on Thursday evening/early on Friday morning, so we will be in DC in six days) and we're starting to get a game plan together for how to best pack up all of our crapola. Rental reservation from Budget Trucks: check (I highly recommend checking out retailmenot.com, people, for coupons on all kinds of stuff- we saved roughly $120 on our truck through this bad boy!). Furniture purchased from Ikea and home delivery scheduled for Thursday: check (since we are heading out a day later than we anticipated, we decided to get our stuff before the move so that we would only have to focus on unloading and assembly in DC). Pick up a bunch of good boxes from U-Haul: check (did you know that these establishments are often little more than add-ons to your friendly neighborhood gas stations? You can rent trucks and buy boxes from BP- who knew?!). Now for the dreaded task of actually putting things in the boxes...stay tuned for pictures of our fun with that!

Of note: Alex and I have survived for two whole years as a couple as of yesterday. We don't have much money and he's exhausted all the time from working crazy hours, but we did manage to eat some yummy German food at the Heidelberg downtown (I love knackwurst, red cabbage, and apple compote, among other things!) and check out Stepbrothers (so ridiculous, it's hilarious) in honor of this milestone.

I am so used to the day slipping away from me. Even when I didn't have the busiest days in the lab (hello, Blogger, Facebook, and NY Times Sunday Magazine!), it always seemed like the evenings were over before I knew it, between making dinner, taking the dog to the park or for a walk, and some sort of errand or other that could not wait for another day. In preparation for starting med school, moving to DC, and leaving my job, the days (and evenings) have been especially packed these last few weeks. Now that I have finished serving time at the lab (which I think is really the best way to describe that experience), I don't know quite what to do with myself! I have still been getting up at my normal time because I don't want to be out of the habit of it, I have made a to-do list for these two weeks, and each day I work out a kind of agenda so that I feel like there is some structure to the day, but it's day three and I am already feeling a little antsy!

Here is what I have done today (as though you care!):

just after 7: Got up and took care of Buttercup things (first bathroom break of the day, breakfast in her Kong, hanging out outside, etc.), made coffee, ate cereal
8:00: woke up the sleepy head
just after 9: packed his lunch and sent him off to work (isn't he lucky?!)
9:15-10:45 (seriously!): tried to figure out how to buy a student metro pass, only to discover that the $26/month unlimited bus and rail pass I had in mind is only for elementary and secondary students- unfair, especially since their parents are paying for it!
11-12:30: started watching Batman Begins (I couldn't help it!) and ate lunch (leftover pitas, yum!)
12:30-1:15: Buttercup woke up from her torpor, so we went for a walk- I made her work too!
1:15-2:20: finished Batman
2:30-3:00: checked email and looked up info on Ikea home delivery & credit card
what I will be doing: finishing up this blog, reviewing some biochem notes, and (hopefully) going for a run (I am still sore from my first foray into getting back in shape on Monday- in which I got caught in a deluge of rain too...which was actually quite nice)

I would so NOT survive as a stay at home mom or someone who works from home!





This is on the menu for today- delicious!

I Loved...

I don't know how many of you went to the movie theatre this weekend to check out the latest Batman, but if you haven't and you're in the mood for an adventure (you can ask Alex, the first words out of my mouth on the way to the car on Sunday were, "I feel like I just got off a ride!"), you simply must check it out. It was not the typical superhero movie. It was a lot darker, funnier, and deeper than anything I had seen before. I must admit, I really enjoy superhero movies of most kinds (my favorite movie so far this year, before The Dark Knight, was Ironman- it's worth mentioning that I didn't get to see Sex and the City or Indiana Jones), Batman is by far my favorite of these movies (ask my little sister how many times we've seen Batman Forever!), and if you've been reading my blog, you know I am quite the Christian Bale fan. To say that I am (heavily) biased is more than adequate. However, I do think you might enjoy even if you aren't the biggest superhero fan, if you never really "got" Batman before this, or if you have no opinion of Christian Bale (although, ladies, do go out and rent Batman Begins if you haven't already seen it because they didn't feel the need to show off his muscular physique in this one!). True, I would have probably enjoyed this movie simply because of my aforementioned biases, but what really made it such a great moviegoing experience for me was Heath Ledger's stellar performance as the Joker and the conception of that character in general, its commentary on the definition and expectations of a hero, and the examination of chaos theory and morality (I know, I'm a HUGE nerd!). I would love to have a cool discussion about this, so please comment away (and check this out for some really interesting thoughts about the moral instinct, especially the trolley car thought experiment on page 2 since that's how I connected the dots between The Dark Knight and this article...and no, I have not abandoned becoming a surgeon in favor of psychiatry yet). That is all.

Seriously?!

This has to be a joke, right? Someone please investigate this matter and tell me where and when the retraction will be printed.

My Typology

As part of orientation (it hasn't emerged just how it will fit in, although I can venture an educated guess), I was asked to take this quiz to see what type of Jung personality I have. It was pretty fun and I always enjoy seeing how I stack up on these things (you should check it out too and learn something about yourself today!). The official result is that I am a:

• slightly expressed introvert
  
• slightly expressed intuitive personality
  
• distinctively expressed feeling personality
  
• distinctively expressed judging personality

Not surprisingly, I was put in the idealist category! More specifically, I am an idealist counselor. One of the suggested careers was that of a psychiatrist- over the last few years, I have thought more and more that that would be a good career choice for me and apparently Jung agrees. I'm curious, do you think this is an accurate picture of me? I think it's pretty true, but I want to know what those on the outside of this mind of mine think, so I better see some comments, people!

Last Week!

In case you haven't been checking my countdown regularly, I just thought I would remind everyone that this is my last week in the lab- EVER! I cannot truly express my excitement at the moment, but it feels very liberating knowing that only four more days after today will be spent toiling away at a job I can't stand, working with (some) people who have no idea how to organize themselves, and just counting the hours until I can go home to my puppy, good book, and wonderful boyfriend. YAY!

Happy Fourth of July (Sans Fireworks)!

Well, I hope everyone had a nice long weekend. I have been so caught up in getting things ready for school and the move that Independence Day just snuck up on me this year. Last year, Alex and I made a concerted effort to find a place that does a proper firework show and we didn't even end up going to the closest one we found because it was supposed to rain and we figured it would be really crowded. We decided a good solution was to go to a Tigers game and had fully intended to do so this year. But, with the aforementioned sneaking by the Fourth and our desire to have a BBQ outweighing our desire to see the fireworks, we opted for our little spot on Barton Pond instead. No fighting for a spot with a grill, just enjoying the gorgeous weather and an extra day off.

Before that, we went to Ikea, a place I already knew I loved, to pick out some essentials for our new home. We were so good about refraining from buying anything now (we're going to keep our moving truck for an extra day after arriving in DC so that we can get all the stuff we selected) and I'm really pleased with the things we found. So even though we won't have a fully furnished house at first (that's a lot of fs!), we will have a sofa bed and two chairs for the living room, a dining room table with four chairs, and a new bed and mattress, which is reason enough to celebrate considering what a P.O.S. our current bed is.

Alex had to work a little on both Saturday and Sunday (boo!), but we went to this park on Sunday evening. We did some swimming (Alex, Buttercup, me), reading (me), and fishing (Alex) and since our spot was far enough away from other people, Buttercup had her first real taste of off-leash freedom- she was a fan! Doesn't she look like she's on the hunt in this picture? I love it!I also think it's so adorable how much of an interest she has taken in fish- she's the perfect dog for Alex. Here she is admiring Alex's crappie.

Drowning in Paperwork

Yes, healthcare insurance coverage is becoming less-inclusive, more complicated, and more expensive as insurance companies and providers look for ways to keep costs down. Yes, this has led to medicine becoming more and more of a business in recent years and to fewer people utilizing preventative care or any medical care, for that matter, because they don't want to or can't afford to pay for it. I knew all of this before and yet still I want to go into medicine. I like to think that I will do my part to improve the broken system when I get there and also hope that a change in administration will occur and begin to address some of these problems before then.

In the meantime, as a patient, I can totally understand why no one wants to go to the doctor unless something is really wrong (and many of them resist even then!). I have just spent the majority of my day (which began at 8:30) thus far on the phone to various doctor's offices with little to show for myself. Yes, I have quite a few things to arrange, but why, oh why, do they have to make it so complicated?! I need to have my medical records, for example, transferred to my current doctor so that they can fill out the forms I need for Georgetown saying that my immunizations are all up to date. For one tetanus shot I had in the summer of 2006 at the University of Michigan, I was made to wait on hold for 15 minutes (while the pre-recorded messages informs me of all the awards the UofM system won last year for patient care, what a crock!), only to be transferred to the medical records department and told that I or my current doctor have to submit a written request to them AND that it will take five to ten business days to process! Not only that, but when I called my doctor's office to see if they could submit the request, I was told that I need to pick up a request form at their office. For one shot, people!

I need to go to a dermatologist to have them look at some moles on my back since I'm super fair-skinned and at high risk for skin cancer. My doctor "referred" me (0r so I thought) to one and gave me the number to call to make an appointment (remember when your primary doctor's office used to do that for you?). So, I called them up today and initially they said they couldn't see me until August 12th, until I mentioned that I will be moving and need to get in before August. Suddenly, an appointment on the 24th materialized from the ether. Now, I have to call my doctor's office (which will be my third call today) to have them make the referral so that I can actually be seen. Why am I even bothering?, I have asked myself countless times today. I am a young, healthy individual and I have plenty of other things going on in my life with the upcoming move without having to deal with this bureaucracy, "protocol," and paper-pushing! Grr...I think that's going to be one of the hardest things for me to adjust to as a doctor. Maybe this little misadventure today is one experience I must have to help prepare me for such a frustrating future.

UEFA 2008

So, if you're like me (and most other Americans), you're not really much of a soccer fan, are you? Well, I played in high school and I love playing it still whenever I get a chance, but MLS doesn't exactly do it for me. I can't say that I am much of a soccer spectator. Enter Alex. He also can't bear to watch our "professionals" either, but one of his first priorities after arriving in Michigan two summers ago was to locate the nearest pub that was showing the World Cup. I didn't know this until I met him, but Europe has their own, similar style tournament every two years when there isn't a World Cup, called, you guessed it, the UEFA Championship. So, as I tend to do when international competition is involved (when the Olympics roll around, for example, I am suddenly an expert in the pommel horse, find myself vehemently and passionately cheering on some swimmer from Long Island I'd never heard of before and will not think of for another four years, etc.), I found myself voluntarily watching Russia defeat the Netherlands in the quarterfinal and stealing glimpses on EPSN360 of the second semifinal game at work so that I would know who Germany would be up against in the final.

All of that preamble explains why we would were at the Irish pub on Sunday afternoon, shouting at a giant TV screen as Germany choked, the Italian refs awarded ridiculous free kicks, and Spain's whiny Torres refused to get up after theatrically embellishing an alleged "foul." Even though it wasn't a very good game in terms of soccer, we met a really nice couple (he's from northern Germany, she's from Baltimore) and I forgot how much fun it can be getting behind something bigger than yourself. It was like a flashback to the summer of 2006: there I was again in Conor O'Neills, hanging out with Alex, drinking a beer while it's still light outside, meeting foreign people and bonding with these strangers as we swap stories and soccer philosophies. Maybe Ann Arbor has something to offer after all, at least during the summers of even-numbered years.