I'm Sorry!

I'm not sure if anyone out there is still reading this blog of mine since the comment situation, which already was not awesome (FYI: not awesome is a phrase of mine and the two words should always be considered together...otherwise it just sounds like I am using poor English, which would be unacceptable), has become pretty much nonexistent, but I am still alive and well! Further apologies to those of you out there whose emails I haven't yet answered and whose phone calls I have yet to return- I have not forgotten about you! I have simply had my first real brush with a poorly organized lecturer and it could not have come at a more inconvenient time. Last week was pretty crazy getting ready for Alex's move and Tricia and Justin's brief visit. Add in some relationship drama, a dog, my first Starfarer experience, a restaurant that doesn't indicate on its website that it's closed for the holiday weekend, a trip to Ikea, four consecutive loads of laundry, wandering around Annapolis trying to find a beach, locking the keys in the trunk of the car, trying to have your boyfriend pose as your dad on the phone (related to AAA and the last item on the list), God knows what else, and trying to teach yourself all the material you covered in a week (which was a lot more than we have covered in previous weeks, let me tell you!) and you have a lack of blogging on my part.

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel: the exam is on Friday and it marks the end of the first module as well. The bad news is that the exam is on Friday and I still need to do a lot of studying until then. Let this be a lesson to me: I really should try to pre-read lecture notes so that I come to class with a vague idea of what the professor is trying to communicate and clarify any questions the day of the lecture so that I don't have a scary cloud of unknown concepts floating above my head...I'll let you know how it goes.

We Have Arrived!

As many of you have already heard and as is probably inevitable with any move, especially one of a distance such as that from Ann Arbor to Washington, we hit a few speed bumps on our way to getting settled. Perhaps the most irritating was our encounter with Washington Gas (that's for anyone wanting to complain about their terrible excuse for "customer service"). In brief, someone came to turn on our gas while we were home and did not bother to knock on the door, thus causing our all-night drive from Ann Arbor to be made in vain. Attempts to reschedule the appointment on Saturday were thwarted by incompetent "customer service representatives," resulting in my missing a pre-orientation BBQ today since I had to wait for the gas man (as I like to refer to him). Happily, it has been turned on now, so I will be able to run the dishwasher and enjoy a hot shower for the first time since arriving. (Those cold ones are brrr!, refreshing!) The next hiccup was that our internet went out shortly after the Comcast technician left on Saturday afternoon and we have been unable to get it back since then (and three subsequent calls to Comcast). I am hoping it comes back this evening or tomorrow. Thus, I am at a Starbucks at the moment, taking advantage of their T-Mobile HotSpot. It feels so good connecting with the outside world again! We had to make a trip to the Ikea in College Park to pick up the midbeam for our bed (among other things) since we forgot to buy one with our home delivery order and thus tried out our sofa bed that first night (super comfy for those of you thinking about coming for a visit!). There were other, smaller problems along the way as well, but overall it went okay.

Alex left this morning (at 4:15 to be exact), so that has been really difficult. The place looks so great (check out some pictures here), but we only got to enjoy it together for a few hours. I know it will get easier once orientation starts tomorrow and he'll have a lot of work to keep him busy, but four weeks is by far the longest amount of time we've had to spend apart.

Okay, I'm off now. I hope to post something again soon, but the tech people at Comcast get the final say on that!

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!

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.

Good News!

I know most of you can probably guess what I am referring to by the title of this post, but Alex and I have some great news! This morning, he was offered the job at Johns Hopkins that he interviewed for on Friday and we are in the process of applying for this adorable rowhouse near Union Station in DC. I probably should wait until we know for sure and we both realize that it's not guaranteed, but these are some pictures of the place we want to live. Isn't it adorable???


The owner seems really nice- he is actually a Seattlite, small world!- and his family (he, his wife, and their son) is moving back to Seattle at the end of the month. In addition to the rooms pictured here, there is a basement with plenty o' storage, two bedrooms, these fun nooks off the back of one bedroom (on the top floor) and the dining room that can be used as an office, extra storage, etc. I am so excited to have a dishwasher and washer/dryer in unit again- I can't even tell you!

The property is being handled by a management company since they will not be in town, so we have to go through them, but Jeff (the owner) said that he wants us to live there as well, so hopefully it will work out. Phew- what an expensive, time-consuming, and stressful weekend we had! It seems like we accomplished what we set out to do in that time, though. Not bad for three days work!



I will write a longer post later, but I just wanted to update everyone on the breakthroughs :)

Stress Alert!

Sorry to be leaving everyone hanging (I know you sit idly by Google Reader, waiting to hear more from me on this blog), but Alex and I have been busy entertaining Katrin and trying to arrange all the stuff associated with our trip out to DC (ride to airport, rental car, hotel, boarding B-cup, apartment viewings, job interviews- it's exhausting just listing all the things, not to mention mentally taxing even thinking about all the things on that list still to be crossed off!). I plan to post a nice entry this evening, showing all the fun things we did in the last week and chronicling our battles with the ever uncooperative weather in this wretched state. I just thought I would remind everyone I'm still here and that I still plan to contribute regularly to this bad boy, but that circumstances have prevented that from happening in the last seven days or so.

Which brings me to the title of this blog. Alex and I are stressing in a major way about finding housing that works with our situation. Our hunt is being complicated by several factors, including 1) accessibility to Georgetown is not optimal (to borrow a phrase from Tricia!) because no metro lines stop directly there, so locations even a little farther away inflate my commute like nobody's business; 2) even if we decided to live in Georgetown or surrounding neighborhoods, neither Alex nor myself are the children of Senators, ambassadors, or other officials who might be able to afford paying the rent rates found in this affluent little area of our nation's capital; 3) Alex's best job prospect at the moment is at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, which is about as far away from Georgetown as you can get and he's not really into the idea of driving for two hours each way just to get to work...he has been hearing from a lot of people in the NIH, which is in much more convenient Bethesda, but we don't want to be counting our chickens before they are hatched and Alex doesn't want to make a career decision based on convenience of commute; 4) even though she's like the cutest thing on earth, for some reason not everyone is warmed by the idea of taking in our adorable dog, Miss Buttercup; 5) since we have out-grown our small one bedroom apartment originally leased for single Alex and not equipped for me, Buttercup, and all of Alex's accumulated fishing accoutrements, we have been mentally compiling a wish list of all the features we want in a new place [second bedroom/den, DISHWASHER (since I am currently filling in for that appliance), washer/dryer in unit, a/c, etc.], which can be difficult to find on top of all of our other problems.

So, as you can see, Alex and I have gotten ourselves into a pickle, as only the two of us can do. Lately, I find myself often thinking of those wise words uttered by Bob Kelso: "Nothing that's worth having in life comes easy." Think good thoughts for us about finding something that tackles all these obstacles and stay tuned for a more fun blog about Katrin's visit :)