Dear Journal,
Feeling listless today. It started this morning, when I tried to make a smoothie out of beef bones, breaking my juicer.

If the above reference, and the entry title, are lost on you, then you NEED to start watching "Glee," or as I call it, "television's greatest gift to humanity in recent memory." You all know how I feel about musicals, especially those set in high schools. This one ups the ante by featuring contemporary pop hits and classic rock standards. To make things even better, it's also really really funny. Just watch it; it won't disappoint.

Moving on to even better things... Tuesday night at trivia, one of the questions required us to name both of the women who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford. Both of them. Our answer was "Squeaky Fromme and... BUH???" Actually, I said something generic like Susan Williams, because it's always better to put some guess than nothing at all. But still. That was tough. The trivia moderators said that they're trying to make the questions a little tougher, and I'd say they have succeeded. By all reports, it's already the hardest (translation: least lame) bar trivia in town, so I'm not sure why they're trying to make it tougher. But we won, for the second week straight, so if that's tougher trivia, I like it! (During the final wager, I was subject to a little ribbing because, when told to name Shakespeare plays that start with 'T', my first thought was "Titus Andronicus." As opposed to, say, "The Tempest.") We also did the best on the "lightning round" question, netting a total of $70 in house cash for the team. Giddy up.

My emergency medicine rotation is still trucking along. I've only had a grand total of two clinical shifts so far (I'll have had six by the end of the weekend), but I have been to plenty of lectures! Honestly, as much as I whine about the travesty of mandatory lectures as a fourth year, they are for the most part very useful. We've covered things like life-threatening causes of common complaints, management of arrhythmias, and acid-base abnormalities. I can usually appreciate how much I'm learning. Occasionally, however, I zone out in lecture because of a wave of abject terror that I'll actually be responsible for taking care of sick people very, very soon. And sometimes those sick people will have another person inside them! I don't know what I'm getting myself into. But let's not dwell on that.

Since I'm no longer on surgical rotations*, I've been able to start volunteering in the med school admissions office again. (That's the only reason I'm still on campus right now, since lecture ended at 11.) Now I sit down with the interviewees for about ten minutes before they go on their tour, and give them a little talk about the clinical years. I remember when I interviewed, the fourth year seemed so wise and old. I could never imagine myself in that position, getting ready to graduate, confidently saying "I'm going to be a [insert specialty here]." And here I am! It's pretty fun to interact with people who are just starting the process.



*Waking up at 7:10 beats waking up at 4:45, but I miss the OR like gangbusters.

Today I learned that pediatric neurology can sometimes be devastatingly sad.

I'm switching to general neurology at the main hospital tomorrow. I've heard that the service has been practically empty for the past two weeks, but I've already accepted the fact that it'll get real busy as soon as I'm on it. And I'm fine with that. Light days are great, but it might actually do me some good to be on a busy inpatient service again. Learning opportunities, and all that. Not to mention that after today I'm ready for any sort of change I can get.

I have to wake up at 6:15 tomorrow morning, and I kinda want to complain about it! Isn't it weird how quickly we can forget what it's like to have to wake up at 4:15?

I played trivia all by myself tonight, and got... what's the word?? Ah yes... OWNED. But I was actually this close to coming in 5th. Too bad I sucked it up on the final question. African geography is my enemy. Anyway, even if I was alone, I needed the time to decompress and do something fun.

And, a poem:

Holy Sonnet X
John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Abrupt ending to that last entry. I was still pretty tired, and ran out of entry-typing steam. To explain a little further, when the second trauma patient came in, most of the team was in the OR with the first guy. The second year resident and I ended up going down to the ED to wait on the second patient. The resident told me that I could do the secondary survey. That's basically a quick head-to-toe exam of the patient, yelling out whatever findings there are. It's kind of important, and that is why I'm glad the guy ended up being in (nearly) pristine condition. Nothing for me to mess up.

It's worth noting that I managed to sleep from 3-5 Tuesday morning. So my long call on Labor and Delivery is still the only time I've ever gone more than 24 hours without sleeping.

So Tuesday, I didn't leave right after rounds. I scrubbed for the first case of the day, because that's what residents do when they stay overnight. I want an authentic surgery experience. It wasn't that bad! But staying any longer would've been pushing it. I came home, was dead to the world for four hours, and then, like a fool, went to trivia. Which we WON despite the fact that when told to name long-running Broadway shows, we forgot the existence of "Les Miserables" AND "Fiddler on the Roof." Excellent.

In completely unrelated news: why had I never even heard of "Oh, Calcutta!" before?

Today I helped the team's intern take care of all the floor patients (that is, post-op, consults and the like). We saw a consult, and followed up on several imaging studies, and changed a couple of wound dressings. We've still got that one epic wound, which this time took six people fifty minutes to do. Not fun, for us or the patient.

I have to give yet another talk at conference tomorrow. Wish me luck!!

The final question at trivia last night was the most perfect question I could ever hope to get. It was, "Name any five of the ten movies that won Best Picture in the 1970s." In other words, "Here LaKedra, take these 20 points." Unfortunately, we were kinda far out of the lead, and several other teams got it right too, so we came in fifth. A respectable finish.

No clinic today, so I should be studying right now. Today I have to go over our lectures on Thoracentesis, GI bleeds, dermatology, and common infections. Then I have to reread my notes on everything else as many times as possible. We have a 'tutorial' on acid-base problems at 5pm. I'm going to go, with the full knowledge that I might leave with a worse understanding of acid-base than I have right now. I'm just a glutton for punishment.

I really don't have that much going on in my life.

Tonight was our last night at trivia before we go our separate ways on rotations. Our team name was "The End of an Era." I know it's not really the last trivia ever, but it won't be quite the same. I am pleased to say that we ended on the best possible note: first place. The final question involved the relative sizes of African nations, a subject that has long tormented us. Getting that right was pretty sweet.

In closing: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why I am unhappy:
At trivia tonight, I totally choked on a 'complete the lyrics' question. The song was "Midnight Show" by the Killers. Midnight freakin' Show. My favorite song from Hot Fuss, and I blanked. Booo.

Why I am happy:
At trivia tonight, we discovered a new source of fun: yelling at people to the tune of "Chop Suey!". If you're not familiar with the song, watch the video. The yelling works best if you make up things to yell at your nonexistent kids. "JOHNNY! I TOLD YOU TO STOP BOTHERING YOUR SISTER! STOP PUTTING YOUR FEET UP ON THE TABLE!" It doesn't come across so well in type, but trust me, it's awesome. I don't even like System of a Down.

Why I am freaking out:
We have like, three days of class left, or something crazy like that. Then we have finals, and then hardcore Boards study time will be here. Also, the other day my class got an email telling us that we will be considered third years as of May 9th. For the purposes of the student-run clinic, that is. I don't know what that makes the class above us, who will be on their last rotations at that point. Third years, upper half?

What I'm listening to right now:
Coldplay's new single, "Violet Hill." Available as a free download on their website for the next week. I'm not sure how I feel about the song yet. I need to spend some time with it.

Speaking of music...:
Atlanta people! Nobody told me that 99.7 FM is no more! That would've been a nasty surprise the last time I drove into the city. (Which, let's be honest, isn't going to be for years and years because I won't have the time.) Anyway, I guess I can free up that preset on my car's radio now.

That's all I've got for now.

Tonight at trivia, the team had to figure out the 18th country in an alphabetical list of African nations (Gabon), name Stanley Cup winners of the 1980s, and remember that Rutger Hauer exists. Just another totally awesome night, ending in a third-place finish! Wooo!


P.S.- I feel like wiki pages like this one are very, very close to what I've been looking for all my life.

Friday marked the first time in a while that I've been at school from 8am to 4pm. I went to 8am pharm for no good reason, besides having to turn in a preferences form for some small group thing we're doing. I did not sit through the 9am lecture, choosing instead to go to the computer lab and do some database work for Emphasis. From 10am to noon, we had small group sessions for Biostats. Noon to 1pm, I tour guided for a pre-med club visiting from Oakwood University. 1 to 2:30, I ate lunch and did some studying.

From 2:30 to 4, I participated in a surgical skills workshop. In the almost two years since I've started medical school, this was the first time I acknowledged the fact that I'll have to spend some time in the OR. Actually, I take that back. I took a scrub class back in October. Anyway, I just haven't been dying to get into the OR like many of my classmates. But I figured that my Surgery rotation shouldn't be my first exposure to suturing and tying knots. So for an hour and a half, I "closed" "wounds" in pig feet and tied square knots with giant shoelace things. I got compliments on my vertical mattress, which was pretty cool. But I didn't leave any more eager to cut people open than I was before. I guess if I'm meant to fall in love with Surgery, it'll have to happen during my rotation.

You might remember that at the beginning of this school year, I talked about how all the first and second years were divided into four Advisory Colleges. Well, yesterday we had the first annual College Cup, competing against each other in feats of strength. My college ended up tied for the championship, aided by our first place finish in the trivia competition. The trivia was a bit harder than I expected, with entire categories dedicated to Seinfeld and beer slogans. (Note: Props to grorx for correctly identifying America's World Class Beer. I failed to give him credit at the actual event because I'm deaf in my left ear.) Overall, the questions were good and I had a lot of fun.

Today, I went to church, and then did some studying at school. What really happened was, I had my Biostats notes out, while I watched Elite 8 games online. (Davidson was so close to pulling off the upset!) I'm probably less prepared than I could be for tomorrow's quiz, but... blah.

I honestly think that second semester of second year exists for the sole purpose of making us sick of the classroom and eager to hit the wards. Case in point: the Biostats course directors didn't even know they were course directors until the day after the class was supposed to start, and the course organization clearly reflects that. I mean, after three and a half semesters of really well-organized classes, what other reason could there be for this foolishness?

The stars must've been aligned just right for trivia last night, because I pulled enough answers out of thin air to freak myself out. Like when we had to name the band founded in 1983 by Dave Mustaine after he left Metallica. Having no idea who this "Dave Mustang" guy was, or that Metallica even spawned a different band (or that Metallica was even around before 1983, come to think of it), I just tried to point my brain down a path that would lead to a reasonable guess. So I asked my brain, 'What kind of band would come from a Metallica person?'. And my brain replied, "Something like Megadeth....?" After throwing around names like Slayer and Iron Maiden, my teammates and I decided to just go with Megadeth. Which was right, and could not possibly have come from a smaller fund of knowledge. The same thing happened a couple more times during the game. We still didn't win, but I guess we can't have everything. Now, if only I could harness this power for classes...

Friday evening was the second annual Light Hall Throwdown. Basically, the administration wants us to love our school so much that we voluntarily hang out there on a Friday night. Crazy thing is, it works. There was a pretty good turnout... I guess free food works every time. I was in charge of the trivia competition, which was fun, if a bit chaotic. At last year's Throwdown, there were only about four people playing trivia! This year there were...more than that!! Maybe around thirty. I probably could've done better a better job in some ways, but I think people enjoyed it.

There was also a "Battle of the Bands," but it wasn't much of a battle. The first-year band has only been playing together for a couple of weeks. They definitely have potential, but for now there's no way they can compete with Music Attack Complex.

People went out for real (to bars and such) after the Throwdown, but I did not. Having dozens of people screaming at me for an hour pretty much killed any desire I had to be social...for the rest of the weekend. Homebody, that's me!!

Warning: Sports Ahead. So, the Vanderbilt basketball Commodores lost to Kentucky in double overtime on Saturday. The way Vandy played for most of the game, it's a wonder they even made it to overtime. Hopefully now that they've actually one, the players will stop acting like they're allergic to rebounding. Being out-rebounded 42-21 is freaking unacceptable. BUT, at this point last season, we were 11-6, so I can't really complain. Also, I think it's a sign of the apocalypse that Kentucky beating Vanderbilt (or anyone, really) at basketball is an upset.

Tomorrow, I get to practice taking a history on a standardized patient! Wheee!

I've had a really hard time with school over the past few weeks. Three trips outside the VMS bubble in such quick succession weren't good for the motivation. Then there's the fact that after my grandmother's funeral, I came back to find midterm grades that were less than pleasing. Which is stupid, because I would've given my right arm to get similar scores during first year. I just felt that it wasn't quite worth the chronic burnout.

Then today, when I finally felt like I was getting back into the groove, I found out that I've wasted lots of study time by learning stuff we were specifically told not to worry about. I was in class that day, but my defective brain just decided not to process the information. Story of my life: I go to class, I try to be attentive, and as soon as I leave the lecture hall it's like I was never there. Nothing I hear ever sticks. Frustrating.

Of course, completely giving up on class attendance would put me further out of the gossip loop than I already am. Just think of the people who weren't there for The Catastrophic Stare of Death and Destruction yesterday. I'm torn... either way, I think I'm going to go ahead and give up on this semester. So much for the lofty goals I set for myself.

Moving on to happier things.

I am playing IM flag football again this year. The first year and second year girls actually got together to form a team. Which is great, because we always have enough people for the games. In fact, we have enough people for a full offense and a full defense, with extras. We had a game last night, against the team that demolished us in the championship game last year. We lost, of course, but this time we actually scored 8 points. Improvement!!

Trivia on Tuesday night was pretty rough for us. The leading score at the first score check was 37 points. By the last score check, we'd only managed to get 34 points. That was about 30 points off the lead. There were a lot of questions we just didn't know, AND we managed to talk ourselves out of a few right answers. But then it happened. I always joke that the category for the final question should be "Stuff only we know, but everybody else thinks they know." Well, it was as close to that as it ever could be. For anybody who wants to test their trivia prowess (guess first, then google it), put the following literary events in order, earliest to latest:

Miguel de Cervantes born
Paradise Lost published
Shakespeare died
Chaucer died
Gulliver's Travels published
Gutenberg Bible printed

We were the ONLY team to get it right, and that was good enough to push us into third place. That's why trivia's so great. I spend most days feeling stupid, but for two hours, I can feel... not stupid.

Last night, we had our third (I think) first-place finish in trivia. It was especially awesome we were only a three-person team. It felt like there were a lot of questions where we didn't know the answer, but were able to stumble upon it. That's always nice.

Mach 9 period is here for sure, in Path at least. By the time I finished studying immunopathology and was ready to start neoplasia, we were finishing up the neoplasia lectures and about to start on the heart. So at the moment, I'm pretending neoplasia didn't happen and I'm trying to stay caught up with heart stuff. Despite knowing that I've missed a whole unit so far, I'm not panicked. Our Neuro prof claims that the pace will really pick up soon, but that's not making me panic either. I'm already too far behind in that class to even feel the acceleration.

Since my rant about the giant run-on sentences in the handouts for one of our classes, my classmates have decided to point out every single typo in all our handouts from other lecturers. People, people. This is not the same thing as spelling a word wrong occasionally, or typing "[singular object] are" from time to time. And really, if I notice the semicolons, do you think I'm not noticing the other typos? That stuff makes the baby Jesus cry, too, but they're just mistakes. Mistakes are forgiveable. Twenty pages of putting semicolons where periods should be is not a mistake, it's a dysfunction. Besides, I understand that being bothered by it is a dysfunction on my part. I never claimed to be normal.

Geography questions come up fairly often at trivia. We do okay with them, but we'd do a lot better if I could spend some time on the as yet uncreated website, www.countriessuperimposedoneachother.com. Countries Superimposed On Each Other Dot Com ("Countries Soup" to oldbies) would give me the ability to generate something like this, for all countries. All you'd need is an image of the outline of every country, the area of every country, and a way to scale those outlines by square mileage (or kilometerage) and superimpose them on each other. With colorcoding, or something.

So one of you programmy people with more free time than I have, get to work on that and I'll love you forever.

We had a huge crowd at trivia last night. I'm glad so many people showed up and had fun, but if it had been a more frustrating night, question-wise, I might have been less cool with it. Unfortunately, the questions were so un-frustrating, our score of 89 wasn't even good enough to place us in the money. I think that's because there was an abnormally high number of multiple-choice questions. When a random guess gives you a 25% shot you're going to have more people stumbling on the right answer and it's a lot harder for a team to distinguish itself.

It's also less fun because you don't have to draw from all knowledge ever to make "educated" guesses. It's awesome when those guesses are right (see: William Golding), and hilarious when they're really, really, ridiculously wrong. The answer to one of last night's questions was Bobby Seale, whom none of us had heard of. We decided that he was probably some Irish guy. If they'd asked something open-ended like "What political party did Bobby Seale co-found?" we probably would've reasoned our way to Sinn Fein. The correct answer? The Black Panthers. That is comedy, people!

I have an Emphasis meeting at 11, and then it's off to the nursing home to do some interviews.

As usual, we discover that when I'm not in school, I actually have very little to say. I'll try to do better.

We definitely redeemed ourselves at trivia tonight. Second place! I only let myself be talked out of one wrong answer. Granted, this was the difference between second place and first place, but after last week I'm not going to complain. Best of all, I was able to get the step-it-down question on the 15 point clue. Heard "She was born Anna Mae Bullock" and pulled "Tina Turner" out of the depths of my brain with an actual physical effort. Seriously, it hurt a little and made me tired. I wish I could explain it.

Our name was quite possibly the nerdiest team name ever: "Ceci n'est pas un trivia." Little homage to Magritte, there. Trivia Dudette (bah!) didn't even bother to try pronouncing it. She just called us "Something in French, and then 'trivia'." I guess she gets points for recognizing it was French? Anyway, I liked the name, and I think from now on, we should take names of famous things, and replace key words with the word 'trivia.' Literature (A Tale of Two Trivias), music ("Where the Streets Have No Trivia"), art (Trivia Descending a Staircase)... endless possibilities. Or, you know, we could try to come up with names that are somewhat offensive and related to current events. Whatever.

It's bedtime now, but I'll make myself write again tomorrow in the hopes that I come up with something vaguely amusing.

I would like to have last night's trivia performance stricken from the records. It wasn't pretty. I could blame it on the fact that we sat at a tall table instead of the usual short table. Or the fact that for the first time ever in the history of my playing bar trivia, there was a woman reader. I'm all for equality in the workplace, but it weirded me out. The position is called Trivia Dude/Trivia Guy for a reason.

Blatant sexism aside, the actual blame for last night's suckiness should probably be placed on me. I suddenly and completely lost my ability to correctly recall any fact which, as you can probably guess, really hurt the trivia performance. The whole night, there were only three things I knew, and I let myself be talked out of two of them. And then the answers I didn't let myself get talked out of? All wrong!! It was baaaad.

After trivia, Liz and I looked at various websites that have cats up for adoption. Yep, we're going to get a cat, and to prevent custody battles three years from now, we've already agreed that the cat will be mine. I'm very excited about it. Most of our friends are either allergic to cats or hate cats, so we'll just have to get new friends.

And now, I go back to the nonstop excitement of geriatrics.

I got back to Nashville on Tuesday. Liz picked me up from the airport and we went straight to trivia, walking in just as the second question was being read. In fact, I texted David an idea for our team name before I called my mom to let her know that I arrived safely. Priorities, people.

It was great to play trivia without having to study or read for Topics. And as annoying as it was to have a waitress who took forever to do anything, it was really exciting to know that I didn't have to go to class the next day. Super exciting. I was positively giddy.

My final exams were waiting for me in my mailbox when I got back to campus. 3 classes, 3 passes, and I'm officially done with all that VMS I foolishness.

Now I have Emphasis foolishness! Today was my second day of work, and I've decided that geriatrics is like pediatrics on crack. You have patients who often can't communicate, won't cooperate, and don't really know what's going on. Only they're a lot bigger, and usually (in nursing homes) don't have family members there to speak on their behalf. Which is sad, in a different way than sick kids are.

And now it's time for "So You Think You Can Dance."

May is National Salad month, so every day I'll be posting a recipe...just kidding.I hope everybody enjoyed last month's poems!

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more, and I set the goal of 50 books for the calendar year. One-third of the way through, I'm pretty much right on pace.

Here are the 16 books I've read so far this year. I decided to only count books that I read for the first time. And yes, one of them (guess which!) is a picture book for children, but I decided to count it anyway.

1. The Pursuit of Happyness -Gardner
2. Black Like Me -Griffin
3. The Color of Magic -Pratchett
4. The Light Fantastic -Pratchett
5. All's Well That Ends Well -Shakespeare
6. Tender is the Night -Fitzgerald
7. Equal Rites -Pratchett
8. The Alchemist -Coelho
9. The Three Sisters -Chekhov
10. The Cherry Orchard -Chekhov
11. The Golden Compass -Pullman
12. Extravagance -Krist
13. Seek My Face -Updike (my favorite of the ones I've finished so far)
14. As I Lay Dying -Faulkner
15. Edwina the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct -Willems
16. The Lyre of Orpheus -Davies

In other news, an excellent showing at trivia tonight was spoiled because we didn't know the capitals of Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Albania, and Tajikistan. I'm pissed at myself, because capital-country pairs are the basic foundation of trivia knowledge. There is no reason that shouldn't be in my head. It's not like I've had to memorize any other large chunks of information lately.

On that note, I must get back to my toga party. (Yeah, togaviruses.)

Trivia night was fun, as ALWAYS. We started out with an okay performance. Not disgracing ourselves, but not destroying the competition either. We had the dreaded Round 3 flameout, which was so discouraging I marked the last question of the round as wrong before we even heard the answer. That ended up being one of the two we got right that round. Going into the final question, we were in 9th place, 20 points behind first.

Then the magic began to happen. The final wager question asked the number of countries whose flags do NOT contain the colors red or blue. Tough!! David and I spent most of the time listing off countries, even though we knew we'd have to just guess. As if we a) know what ALL the flags of the world look like and b) could name all the countries of the world in the first place.

Then, our team was called to answer a tiebreaker question. They only break ties for the top three places, so we knew we must have done something right! And this tiebreaker was a lot more reasonable than last week's. We got Dwight Eisenhower's year of birth exactly right and ended up placing second! For the second week in a row! It was basically the trivia equivalent of Boise State's performance in the Fiesta Bowl. Mediocre performance, then terrible performance, then perfection at the end. Good times.

"Wait, wait. Can we please just acknowledge the fact that we are having a discussion about whether Chester A. Arthur's sideburns met in the middle?"

God, I love trivia. LOVE LOVE LOVE. We placed second tonight!! It would have been first, but we were WAY off on the tiebreaker question (weight of the biggest blue marlin ever caught.) Liz summed the situation up nicely: we lost twenty-five dollars because we didn't know that a fish could weigh a thousand pounds. What did we know, you ask? Well, there was Martin Strel's claim to fame, the number of U.S. Presidents who have had beards or mustaches (9, including Chester Arthur), and what year the French & Indian war began (1754, Beth knew it exactly). We then rocked the final question, knowing the more famous names of Marion Morrison, Robert Zimmerman, Allen Konigsberg and Frances Gumm.

Other highlights of the night included rocking out to "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" and Beth rejecting cheese. Why oh why must I wait a whole week for trivia time to come again??