So long, Paul

A truly fantastic actor, and by all accounts, an even better person:

Paul Newman, has passed away. I will be watching one of my all time favorite movies, The Sting, in his honor tonight.

xo,
Ms. v

Bad ways to start a morning...

As I was sitting downstairs studying the other day, I could hear soon-to-be-ex-Hub rummaging around in every cupboard, drawer, and closet space in our upstairs bathroom. You know it'll turn interesting when the conversation goes like this...

Me: "Are you alright up there?"
Soon-to-be-ex-Hub: "No."
Me: "What's the matter?"
Soon-to-be-ex-Hub: "I can't stop the bleeding."

Silence.

I make my way upstairs only to find that he has, in fact, cut himself and he can't, in fact, stop the bleeding. I patch him up and make sure to comment that any one he dates in the future will also need to have some sort of medical or first aid training.

Fun times.

xo,
Ms. V

Two weeks of dazzling adventures

Sometimes I feel like my life is a giant practical joke. Here's why:

Tuesday, 8/26: I got out of class 30 minutes early, headed home, and found that my Amazon.com order had arrived. At this point, I think "Wow, this day can't get any better!" Completely excited, I figured I would get right to work in assembling my new pieces of furniture. After having done such a fantabulous job with my coffee table, I knew it would be a piece of cake. I started to put together my bookcase, only to discover that the holes were drilled into the wrong side of one of the pieces. I put everything back in the box and emailed Amazon. I then moved on to the bathroom storage unit and assembled the bottom half. Before moving on to the top, I decided to make sure it would actually fit in my bathroom. It didn't. I put everything back in the box and emailed Amazon again. I looked at the third item, a hutch, and realized it was too large for my apartment and I didn't really need it anyway. I was smart enough not to open the box this time, but had to email Amazon a third time. At this point, it occurred to me that I just spent a ton of money that I don't have on 3 items that I don't need (and don't really have room for). It turns out that only one of the three items is returnable. I now have a path of boxes from my door to my computer and bed. Yes, I'm serious.

Wednesday, 8/27: I woke up and thought "Well, at least today can't be any worse than last night!" My gosh, I'm an idiot. I made my way out to my car only to find that it wouldn't start. Normally, I could just walk to school since I live less than 1 mile away, but I was inconveniently parked in a "Wednesday spot." My car had to be moved by 9am, otherwise I would receive a $75 parking ticket that I couldn't afford (after spending all that money on the now-useless furniture). There was also the possibility it would get towed. It would depend on whatever mood the parking officer was in at the time. Since I still have VT plates, my bet is that it would be towed. I didn't want anyone to mess with Zippy Jr, so I called my friend for a jump start. It worked. Yay.

Thursday, 8/28: I woke up and thought "After the last two days, today HAS to be better." HA! Zippy Jr. wouldn't start again. I left the dome light on. To quote George Costanza, "I am Ms. V, Queen of the idiots." I couldn't walk to school on Thursday because we had to play dress up and I was wearing high heels. There was no frakking way I'd walk a mile in those shoes. I called my friend to come pick me up. After class got out, another friend gave me a ride home and tried to jump start Zippy Jr. but to no avail. A kind gentleman happened upon us and offered his services. He said both of our batteries were fine. He took mine out, cleaned things up, put it back in, and Zippy Jr. still wouldn't start. We had stood outside for an hour, desperately hoping that the problem would soon be solved, only to find that we were back at square one and short the $20 that I had paid the guy who helped us. I called my father. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Am I the only one of the kids who has ever called you with car problems?"
Dad: "Yes. Call AAA. They'll boost you."
It turns out that my friend's battery didn't have enough juice to jump start ZJ's battery. AAA came to my rescue, and I took my friend out for Mexican food and cheesecake to celebrate the return of ZJ's happily purring motor.

Wednesday, 9/3: I took the first exam of the semester and realized that I hadn't studied at all. I passed, but not by much. At that point, I didn't even care. There's a saying in PA school: "C gets the degree!" It's my new mantra.

Thursday, 9/4: I woke up this morning only to find that I had no running water. Fan-frakking-tastic. I didn't have class today, thankfully, but had to meet with my study group to work on a class project. I called up the two girls who are in the group with me (the same two girls who had rescued me when I had car problems last week), told them I'd be late, then called my aunt to ask if I could use her shower. I raced to Delmar, became human, grabbed a bagel at Bruegger's and arrived only an hour late. Not bad. Ten minutes after sitting down in our library study room, however, the fire alarm went off. We had to evacuate. It wasn't a drill. Great. After being let back in, we finished our project and parted ways. I haven't stopped laughing since, mainly because I know darn well that there must be a hidden camera somewhere and I will somehow end up on TV after all this. It's probably some knew reality show. "How much can the PA student handle?" Or "How many bad things does it take to set off an Irish woman's temper?" Check your local listings.

That's it for now. Wish me luck for the weekend!
xo,
Ms. V

Draw'rings

This is what I do during class:

It's almost amazing that I'm actually passing, huh?

Truthfully, doodling actually helps me pay better attention. If I didn't doodle, I'd daydream. At least I actually hear what the professors are saying when I doodle. Some of it must stick in my brain somewhere.

Final exam status: 3 down, 2 to go. Speaking of finals, it's time for me to get back to studying.

xo,

Ms. V

Getting there

My current final exam status is: 2 down, 3 to go.

I have one tomorrow on the kidneys, one on Friday morning in Applied Pathophysiology (this time it's kidneys and endocrine), then another on Friday afternoon that is 120 questions long and - get this - CUMULATIVE. Fun times. We'll be tested on pathology, cardiology, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and kidneys again. Fun times.

At approximately 3pm on Friday, August 1st, 2008, I will likely be the happiest woman alive. That is when I officially go on break for two glorious weeks. :D

Wish me luck!

xo,
Ms. V

I'm still alive

Things I need

- A good chiropractor in the capital district.
- A massage. Desperately.
- Sleep, and lots of it.
- A caffeine IV.

If anyone out there can point me in the right direction for any of my requests, I would greatly appreciate it.

We have only 3 weeks left of this hellish summer semester. After that, I'll have a 2 week break that will be spent traveling around upsate NY and VT, and moving out of the townhouse. Should be interesting. What happens next? Well, I'll start another 15 weeks of torture with the fall semester. Great. Fun times. Prepare to deal with a very crabby Ms. V.

That's all for now. I have a test, a paper, and a homework assignment all due on Friday. I'm fairly convinced that our professors are actually in some sort of super-secret special ops part of the military and they're testing new forms of psychological torture on us.

xo,
Ms. V

My own little version of "You Might be a PA Student If..."

Well folks, here's a small taste of my life.

You might be a PA student if...

- You check your watch so often that you even look at your wrist in the shower and have a mild panic attack when you see that it isn't there. It takes a few seconds to recover and realize that you don't actually wear your watch in the shower and there is no pressing need to know what time it is every second of the day, anyway.

- Your backpack has become a constant companion. A constant, heavy, companion. When you don't wear it, you have phantom limb pain.

- You buy beverages according to caffeine content. When you go out for some rare leisure time, you buy beverages according to alcohol content.

- You refer to anyone who hasn't gone into a medical profession as a "non-masochist."

- You seriously consider the possibility of living in a shack on the beach and selling sun-tan lotion for the rest of your life.

- You start to think things like "Oh, it's only another $10,000 on my loan. That's not too bad."

- You realize that the afore-mentioned loan will total more than many mortgages when you're finished.

- You also realize that, after graduation, you will have to move to a remote part of Alaska to qualify for repayment of the afore-mentioned loan because that is the only way you will ever be able to afford things like groceries again.

- You watch TV shows, commercials, or movies and notice all of the things people do wrong, medically. You announce these things to your friends. They give you a look that says "It's fiction... it doesn't matter if she put the earpieces of her stethoscope in backwards."

- You automatically run through the ABCDEs in your head whenever you notice that a friend has a mole. You then tell them what the ABCDEs are and insist they go to a dermatologist immediately just for monitoring. Pester them until they make an appointment.

- When you're out in public, you diagnose certain things on sight alone, then you think about how you would write up a description of your assesment.

- By the end of first semester, you have become convinced - on at least three occassions - that you have some sort of rare disease or condition. Your classmates have also convinced themselves of this. Between the 30+ students, you've covered every disease known to man.

- You have absolutely no clue what your, :ahem:, cycle is anymore - partly because you're constantly stressed and partly because you sit in a classroom with 30 other women every single day. You also hang out together most evenings.

- You can put together a complete sentence using only acronyms and abbreviations and know exactly what it means.

- You use these acronyms and abbreviations with your non-school friends and they look at you as if you're speaking Greek. (You are).

- You say things like "If I see the word beta-adrenergic one more time I'll have to claw my eyes out." You're only half-kidding.

- You love every single second of it and wouldn't trade it for the world because when you finally stop to think about it, you're still astounded that you got accepted in the first place. ;)

Time to get back to studying for the big Pathyphysiology exam tomorrow (and hence look at the word "beta-adrenergic" again and again and again).

xo,
Ms. V